The Mirror of Asgard
by Nelinde A
Summary: After crash-landing on a new planet, Thor has his memories stolen, and Loki reluctantly joins him on a journey to recover them. The only thing is, this realm seems eerily familiar to the one they just left. SPOILERS FOR THOR: RAGNAROK
1. Chapter 1- Crash-landing

**A/N: So I don't know why Thanos' ship is showing up at the end of _Thor: Ragnarok_ when they've still got two years to go before _Infinity War_ happens. I'm sure that'll be explained, but for now I'm going to assume that Asgard got a little sidetracked when making their journey to Earth. **A** nd thus this story was born. ****Oh, and apparantly "Brunnhilde" is Valkyrie's real name, so that's why she's called that here.** **I know I keep starting stories that take forever to finish, but this one's different, cause I actually wrote it all out first!**

 **And yes, I did make up all the new planets and their inhabitants in this story.**

 **Sigh. I really didn't want to be a Loki fangirl. It's embarassing to like something that so many other people like. But the reason I was able to write this story out before publishing it was because it just was so easy to do; it's like it was spilling out of me! So I guess I truly am a fangirl. (But Loki is a villain, guys. He may only be craving love and attention, but the things he's done are still horrendous, and there's nothing to be misunderstood about that.) So! Here we go, in a story that, despite my previous statement, shows just how much the bond between Thor and Loki is still there.**

Loki wasn't entirely sure what the ship had hit. Of course it wasn't likely that someone would come and inform him of every little thing that came onto the ship's radar as a threat, but still, it would have been nice to hear screams from above or something to let him know to look out the window. He'd been below the main deck, in one of the only private compartments on the ship, which he'd instantly claimed as his own chambers. Fortunately Thor trusted him enough now to let him have it, which Loki was incredibly grateful for, because where else would he feel safe admiring his newly stolen—

"Loki!" Brunnhilde called, pounding on his door. "Thor needs to speak to you."

Ah, _there_ was the messenger. Loki calmly opened his door and walked up with the Valkyrie. "What was it?" he asked, in the smooth voice that left the impression it didn't matter to him one way or the other.

"Another ship, we think. Came out of nowhere, and then disappeared."

"A hit-and-run driver?" A smile poked about Loki's lips. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather take this up with the space police?"

"Shut up, it's not funny," she said, shoving him. "And I didn't see the need to involve you at all, but your brother insisted."

Thor was standing in front of the ship's control panel, with lights flashing and sirens blaring all around him. He turned when he heard them coming, and his face took on a look of relief.

"Loki, please, make it stop," he begged.

"Yeah." Loki looked out the front window. "I think your problem, Brother, is that a big chunk of the ship is missing, and we appear to be falling."

"I know _that_ , but what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Seriously?" Brunnhilde asked. "That's what you called him up here for?"

"He's better at making decisions than I am," Thor protested.

Loki shrugged. "Land it, as best you can. I see a planet right there. Anything else I can offer my expertise on?"

Thor didn't answer. He had rushed back to the control panel, stared at it blankly for a moment, then slipped in the seat and began pushing every button in sight.

"Should I start trying to evacuate people?" Brunnhilde asked.

"There's no time," Thor called. "Or resources, really, we're holding a few thousand passengers over the limit. Though if you wanted to warn them to strap themselves down, I think that might be a good idea."

Brunnhilde turned to comply, and Loki watched in amusement as Thor scrambled to get control of the ship. "Well, you really are just the _worst_ at flying under pressure," he said.

"I don't see you doing any better!" Thor snapped.

Loki reached over and pulled a green lever, which righted the ship. Thor immediately took advantage and began pressing the correct buttons this time. He was able to maneuver it gently over and into the planet, picking a large grassy field to land in, fortunately before the ship could spin out of control again. Loki smirked, but Thor merely threw him a look of annoyance mixed with begrudging thanks before vacating his chair and going to see how his people were doing.

Loki, however, stayed and opened the doors. He slowly stepped down the walkway, his blue eyes darting over everything in sight. It looked very similar to Asgard, interestingly enough. He would have expected this to be one of the Nine Realms that he knew so well, as he didn't think it was possible to reach another planet simply by flying through to Midgard. And yet here it was, a planet that was covered in lush foliage; gardens and forests, with a large body of water in the distance. There was even a gold palace, though Loki could see at once that there was a marketplace surrounding the palace that looked as wild and unkempt as some of the alleyways of New York. This, at least, differed from his home planet.

That and there was a distinct lack of Bifrosts or Rainbow Bridges, of course.

He was still observing, silently taking everything in, when Thor joined him. "Where are we?" the god of Thunder asked.

"If I said Asgard, would you believe me?" Loki said.

"I almost would, yes," Thor said. "It certainly does look very much alike. That's marvelous, it means we'll fit right in. And that the people will be hospitable."

Loki raised his eyebrows and turned to give Thor an incredulous look. "Asgard? Hospitable?"

"Heimdall!" Thor called over his shoulder. "Look after the people. I'm going to go see if I can get some help for the ship." He turned to Loki. "Coming, Brother?"

"No, I think it'd be better if I stayed here and helped…um…look after the people."

Thor laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man!"

Loki gave him a false smile as he wandered off, then immediately let it fall and walked past the people back to his own quarters. If there were indeed people coming to fix the ship—though he rather doubted Thor would be able to negotiate for help properly—then he didn't want anything incriminating to be found in his room. The next thing he did was to look around the ship for an owner's manual. He did this more for his own amusement then for anything else, and it was indeed amusing to him when he found it in an unused, broken locker. He took it back outside, sat up against the wreckage of the ship, and began reading it.

Brunnhilde came out at some point and said "Loki, I know you struggle with helping other people and all that..."

"Ugh, there's nothing quite as degrading," Loki replied, looking at her over the top of his manual. "So I trust you're not about to ask me to do anything like that."

"…But the medic robot is down, and we need help fixing it."

Loki thought for a minute, then waved his hand dramatically. "There, it's fixed."

"Thank you." Brunnhilde walked back in, and Loki listened for a moment, then heard a crash and shriek, and a loud "LOKIIIII!"

He smiled to himself. "I don't know anything about repairing robots, Val," he said, low enough so that he knew she wouldn't overhear him. "I just know how to give the illusion that it's repaired."

A few hours later, he was reading a very fascinating section of the manual that explained what to do if your oxygen tanks were for some reason chewed through by space pigs, when he heard someone trudging towards him. He glanced up to see Thor walking in what was a gallant attempt at a straight line, and he looked very disoriented.

"Well you certainly took your time," Loki said, flipping a page. "Didn't get any help then? Don't feel bad, you've got to work at the silver tongue thing. I'll go in a minute, just let me finish this. Did you know that if a space pig mates with a raccoon, the offspring will always be more raccoon than pig?"

"Right, yes, of course…" Thor said distractedly. Loki continued reading for a page or two, then looked up to see his brother still glancing around confusedly.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Forgotten how to climb a ramp? Go on, your people will want to know you're back, and don't worry, I'm sure they'll forgive you for bringing them back absolutely no hope at all."

"Oh I know, I know, it's just…forgive me, but, who are you?"

Loki lifted his eyes. He narrowed them just for a second, then uncrossed his legs and stood up. "What?" he finally asked.

"Do you know what I'm doing here?" Thor asked earnestly. "And, do you know…who I am?"

Loki narrowed his eyes again. "Hilarious," he said. "Honestly, I'm surprised you even came up with a prank like that. I see, wander off onto the unknown planet, and then come back and try to trick the trickster by pretending you've got amnesia, was that your game?"

"Amnesia?" Thor asked, panicking. "Is that what I've got? That's bad, isn't it?"

"Thor, we really don't have time for this, so I should inform you that I've fixed the ship and we're going to fly away and leave you here," Loki said.

"Oh." Thor looked crestfallen. "Well, all right, I'll leave you to it then." He turned and began walking away."

Loki stood in shock for a moment. It took a lot to knock him off his guard, but this had done it. "Okay…so you're not joking," he said.

Thor looked back hopefully. "I'm not?"

"No." Loki grabbed him by the shoulder and marched him up the ship. "And we've got to fix this before doing anything else."


	2. Chapter 2- Missing Memory

Heimdall peered into Thor's eye for a long time. Then he placed his hand on Thor's head, and closed his own eyes.

"I already tried that," Loki said. "The memory is gone; it's just…gone."

Heimdall didn't answer at first. When he did speak, it was to say to Thor, "Do you know who you are, my king?"

"King?" Thor's face lit up. "I'm a king?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "I guess there are some primal instincts one can't erase," he said bitterly.

"What is your name?" Heimdall asked.

"I don't know," Thor said. "I keep trying and trying to think, and all I come up with is a blank."

Hulk picked Thor up and shook him. "YOU THOR!" he boomed. "YOU TINY AVENGER!"

"Woah, hey, steady, big guy," Brunnhilde said. "Give him his space."

"Thor?" The god repeated. "Thor…nope, sorry, doesn't ring a bell."

"But what could have happened to him?" Loki asked Heimdall. "It isn't like he's got a mortal's head, and one impressive blow knocks all the memories right out of him. It'd have to be something stronger…something that could take down a god."

"Yes," Heimdall nodded. "A trickster, one could say. A being who delights in magic and delights using it for his own amusement even more."

Loki looked at him in disbelief. "You cannot truly believe that _I_ did this."

"I know you didn't," Heimdall replied. "Because I saw who did. I do not know who it is, but if this is a parallel Asgard, then it was likely the parallel you that I saw blow the dust of a violet flower into his face. Our king never even reached the palace."

"If you knew this, why didn't you go after him sooner?" Brunnhilde demanded.

"Because he was out of harm's way, as far as I could tell," Heimdall replied. "I knew I'd be going after him if he didn't find his way back, but there were the people to think about."

"Okay, so, how do we get his memory back?" was Brunnhilde's next question.

"Are we even sure that it can come back?" Loki asked offhandedly. But then suddenly something changed in his face and he said, "It _can_ come back, can't it?"

"Memories can never truly be destroyed," Heimdall said. "Even things forgotten by the mind can be remembered elsewhere. And unless all my years of studying Loki have been in vain, this creature will not have gotten himself into anything he cannot get out of. He rose, and helped Thor up. "I will take him back to the spot where he was met by this being. I should be in no danger, as I know what to expect. Brunnhilde, watch over the people, and Loki…" he gave him a golden-eyed stare that needed no help in being intimidating. "If at all possible, stay out of mischief."

"Actually, I think the throne sort of falls to me in the absence of anyone else," Loki started, but another look from Heimdall shot him down.

"The king is not absent," Heimdall said. "He will merely be traveling a few miles away, for only a few hours."

Thor glanced round at all of them and smiled amiably. But Loki hadn't expected to feel the sting he did when Thor looked at him and didn't know him. Many people gathered to watch Heimdall and Thor take off down the ramp and off into the forest, and Brunnhilde slid into the seat next to Loki, chugging down whatever current alcohol she was in favor of.

"Well if I'd known all I needed was to have a flower blown in my face in order to forget, I'd have come here years ago," she said.

"He looked right through me," Loki said distantly.

"What?" Brunnhilde asked.

Loki started. "What?"

"I thought you said something," she answered. "Must be weird for you, all of this. I mean, I know he can be thick-headed sometimes, but not knowing his own beloved name? That's got to be a first."

"Uh-huh."

"Seriously," she said, after another swallow. "I'm pretty sure his name is etched into _my_ memory for all eternity, given the amount of times he's reminded me of it."

"Yes."

"Do you know that he didn't even ask me my name until _after_ we'd escaped Sakaar? Just kept calling me 'Valkyrie,' sort of the way you still only call me 'Val.'"

"Mm."

Brunnhilde squinted at him. "Are you even listening to me?"

He turned abruptly. "Don't you have people to watch over, or something?"

"Eh, there's no immediate danger," she said, shrugging and popping another can open. "Besides, I think they can take pretty good care of themselves."

Loki's response was to stand up and step over to the ramp leading out onto the planet. "Hey, where are you going?" Brunnhilde asked.

"Nowhere," he answered. "Where could I possibly go?"

Actually, that part was making him very uncomfortable. He hated being imprisoned; despised not being free to go where he wished and do as he pleased. But though that happened to him more frequently than he would have liked, he knew he could always rely on his patience. Every time, every time he was trapped in a place he didn't want to be, he merely bided his time, and, so far, he had always eventually been freed. This whole being stranded on a planet thing, he knew, was also temporary. He would likely be able to trick this kingdom out of whatever help he needed, and Heimdall would know how to fix Thor.

But that didn't mean he still wished they could all hurry up and get it over with. There was something about this planet that he didn't like at all. It was too much like home, and yet completely different. It felt so real it was almost fake.

And then there was his brother. Loki wasn't at all a fan of this sudden bout of amnesia. He had played his fair share of tricks on Thor, and tried to kill him even more often, but every time he'd done so Thor had looked at him and known who he was. This was a very new feeling, and it was a feeling Loki would not have expected to hate so much. He decided to steal Thor's eyepatch when he came back, simply to restore balance to the universe.

He again sat down against the wreckage, and found the manual that he'd left behind. He picked it up and opened it, but it had lost any momentary amusement that it previously contained. He pretended to read it anyway, but when he saw Heimdall and Thor returning in the distance, he ran back inside the ship and back next to Brunnhilde, who was snoring on the bench. He pushed her over so that he'd have room to sit, and opened his manual again.

When Heimdall brought Thor in, he turned to Loki and said "It would have been better if you'd just stayed outside. Then I wouldn't have guessed that you care."

"You may see my actions, but you can't see my thoughts," Loki replied. "I didn't want you to think I was waiting for you."

Heimdall gave a knowing smile, and Loki opened his mouth to protest, but then shut it and drew himself up. "I wish someone would take _your_ eyes," he said in annoyance.

Heimdall just smiled again, as Brunnhilde rolled off the bench and woke up with a start. "Hey, you're back!" she slurred, looking at them through blinking eyes. "You good, Your Majesty?"

Thor shook his head, and Heimdall said, "I found the creature who attacked him, but, unfortunately, he seeks an audience with someone other than myself."

"Oh come on, all you had to do was threaten his life," Brunnhilde said in disgust. "Please tell me you did that. No, you know what, I don't care. I'll go, and I'll show that driveling parasite what pain really feels like."

"The mind is a delicate thing," Heimdall replied. "You cannot risk further injury to it. If he wants to speak to Loki, then speak to Loki he shall."

Loki looked up. "Me," he said. "That thing wants to talk to me?"

Heimdall nodded.

Loki sighed. "Very well, point me in the right direction," he said resignedly. "And please, someone, get to figuring out what needs to happen to make this ship fly again. We've wasted too much time here already."


	3. Chapter 3- The Goblin

**A/N: I think there was a bug or something when I posted Chapter 2, because I didn't get any confirmation that it was posted. So I'm posting Chapter 3 now, too, just to be safe. You're welcome. (LOL, as if this is something you're waiting for with bated breath. Mostly I was just too eager to wait another whole day.)**

Loki glided through the forest in silence, staring straight ahead in an unspoken resolve to reach his destination as swiftly as possible. But that was proving somewhat difficult, as Thor was marveling at everything in sight, and occasionally would stop to ask Loki what something was called. Loki only answered him some of the time, in the hopes that this would be the last thing asked of him, but it never was. But then Thor asked an entirely different question.

"Heimdall tells me that you are my brother?"

Loki gave him a sideways glance. "Yes."

Thor nodded in understanding, but when he didn't press the matter further, Loki decided to. "What exactly do you know?" he asked. "I never really understood how amnesia works, because, you knew what the word meant when I said it, you understand the 'brother' concept, and you apparently remember how to speak and how to walk. But you don't know the names of the things that make up your surroundings, and you don't remember anything in your life that has happened to you. How does that add up?"

Thor smiled. "I am sorry that I cannot explain it to you," he said. "I wish I could explain it to myself. But all I know is what I know."

"Well, I hope you'll have some choice words for whoever did this to you," Loki replied. "Because taking the memories of a god is low, even for me."

"Are we almost there?" Thor asked.

Loki sighed in exasperation. "You tell me, Brother, you're the one who's been here before."

"Oh, right." Thor pointed. "It's just over that, behind that big tree."

"Big" was a bit of an understatement to describe the tree, as Loki might have pointed out another time. Its trunk was twice as thick as even the thickest they'd seen so far, and it went up so high and spread its branches so far that it seemed to canopy the rest of the forest. It covered that immediate area, anyway. When the two walked behind the tree, they found a sort of grassy throne that was inhabited by a goblin-like creature, lounging and smirking at them. His skin was a dull green, and was incredibly wrinkled and bony. His eyes held such mischievous cruelty and malice that Loki was instantly offended that Heimdall considered this to be a parallel of himself. "Ooh, you'd better hope I forget to mention this to you when I get back," he said to the air.

"Well would you look at that," the goblin said with a cackle. "You actually _did_ turn up, Loki Son of Odin. I never actually expected you to; I only said that to get that…" he shuddered. "…very nosy man out of my forest."

Loki was silent, letting the goblin get the inevitable monologue out of his system. This was the initial stage of bargaining, and one he was very familiar with. He wasn't going to rush it along.

"However," the goblin eventually resumed, when he'd finished his laugh. "Luckily for you, I came up with a proposal to offer you, just in case you were naïve enough to turn up. Let's call it, an official gauging of what you're willing to go through for that half-wit brother of yours."

"Half-wit?" Thor demanded angrily. Then he looked worried and leaned in to Loki. "Am I actually a half-wit?"

"Actually, given recent events, I'm surprised you've got any wits left," Loki answered.

"There are certain possessions that I have desired for a very long while," the goblin answered. "Four, to be exact. Do not worry, I know exactly where they are and how to get to them, and all you have to do is retrieve them."

"You honestly think I'm just going to take your word on that?" Loki asked.

The goblin laughed again. "And this is why it surprised me so that you turned up. But yes, I suppose you'll have to, at least until you find the first thing. Then you'll know that I'm telling the truth."

"So it is possible to restore his memories."

"But of course. I wouldn't have done it if I knew I couldn't bargain for the reverse."

"Thank you," Loki said. He took Thor's elbow and steered him around. "Come, Brother, we're leaving."

"Wait!" the goblin cried. "I haven't even told you what the things are!"

"Don't waste your breath," Loki said. "I have no interest in your bargain. I just needed to know if we were wasting our time by trying to fix him."

"You _will_ be wasting your time," the goblin said. "The flower I used…its power can only be undone by the person who did it in the first place."

Loki slowly turned back around. "That seems terribly convenient."

"Well, I did choose it," the goblin replied.

"But if it were me, that's exactly what I'd tell somebody," Loki answered.

The goblin shrugged. "Fine," he said. "Go off on your merry way, fix your little ship, and just pray that you made the right call. Because this is a one-time offer. You'll never be able to find me or bargain with me again."

"We accept," Thor said quickly.

Loki took a little longer, looking at the goblin with a stare that would have killed him if it could. His clever mind was racing, desperately trying to conjure up any other alternative. But the goblin was right. Loki wasn't going to just walk away from what might be Thor's only chance. If nothing else, he would be slaughtered on the spot by Thor's people, because Heimdall was definitely watching this. Loki had spent two years on the throne of Asgard with sharp reminders that Heimdall could see everything. He had learned to watch himself in everything he did, and if he couldn't use his magic to hide it, then he'd have to do it in some way that he knew Heimdall wouldn't be able to touch him for it. Neither was possible in this instance. "Fine," he said. "What do you want?"

The goblin gave a grin that was so hideous Loki almost wished that he hadn't agreed for that reason alone. "It's very simple," he said. "I want the king's Horn of Plenty, up at the castle. I want the red bracelet kept by the poorest family on the edge of town. I want the Sword of Victory that Lady Gallivant has on the planet Sindar. Here's a key to Sindar…just turn it wherever you are and it will open a doorway, but it will only work once. And then, Loki of Asgard, I want your greatest possession. I'm sure I don't need to tell you where _that_ is."

Loki was unfazed by even this last request, but he still looked at the goblin in disgust. "What, you wouldn't like the keys to the universe, too?" he asked.

"If that was the greatest thing you possessed, then maybe," the goblin replied. "But I imagine what you have will be much harder to part with."

Loki still wasn't concerned about this request. He'd managed to snag a thing or two from Asgard before he went to find Odin, and his magic came in handy more often than anyone saw. Even if for some reason this goblin knew his secret and wasn't referring to a different stolen item, Loki was such a master of deception that there was no way he'd have to actually turn it over.

He looked at Thor and sighed, "Well, Brother, it appears that we've landed in a fairy tale. Complete with tacky quests and…artifacts you only hear about in childrens' stories."

"Actually, I think this is quite exciting!" Thor answered. "I've never been on a quest before!"

"You…have, actually, but that's not really the point right now. The point is that we're suddenly running errands for a horrendous imp that he'll hoard for eternity because he has no idea what to do with them."

"You think I'm doing this for the objects?" the goblin laughed. "I could get any idiot who walks through here to do the same thing. I just want to send the infamous Loki on the most degrading and ridiculous quest I could think of. I just want the satisfaction of knowing I out-tricked the trickster. It's the same reason as I took away his memories to begin with. I'm only looking for a good laugh; surely you understand something about that."

Loki pulled out his dagger and pushed it up against the goblin's throat. "I still have time to pin you to this tree," he said in a low voice.

"You can't kill me," the goblin hissed back. "You need me to help your brother."

"At the moment killing you seems more appealing," Loki replied slowly, enunciating every syllable so the goblin didn't miss a word.

"Loki," Thor replied. "Come on, we should get going."

The goblin and the god kept their eyes locked for a moment more, before Loki let him go and reluctantly put his dagger away.

The goblin handed Loki a small brown satchel. "When you retrieve an object, you may put it in there," he said. "It'll come straight to me, and we won't have to worry about someone trying to steal it back from you. I imagine you'll want to turn over the fourth thing in person, and at that time I'll restore your brother's precious memories."

"You will indeed," Loki replied. "Because if you don't and I no longer have anything to lose, I can make you suffer in more ways than you thought existed."

The goblin laughed again. "So emotional," he said. "Unusual, for a frost giant."

Loki's face took on a mixture of rage and shock, but Thor was pushing him back the way they'd come like a child dragging on their parent's hand. "Come _on_ , Loki."

And Loki did, but he couldn't help looking back at the skinny monster, sitting back under the tree with the same smirk he had greeted them with.


	4. Chapter 4- Finding the Horn

When Loki and Thor returned to the ship, Brunnhilde rushed down the ramp to meet them. " _Now_ are you good?" She asked Thor.

"Still no," he said. "But Loki and I are going on a quest!"

"No," Loki said. "Just me. You're not coming."

Thor looked confused. "Why not?"

"Because I can do this faster by myself, and I don't want to have to be watching out for you, since you clearly don't know how to take care of yourself."

"Now listen here, Loki," Thor said, puffing out his chest. "I may not remember who I was before, but apparently I was a king. And that means first of all that I can still be that person, and secondly, that you have to do what I say."

"He's right," Heimdall said, coming down the ramp as well. "Besides, it is better for the people if do not see him like this longer than they already have. It may make them lose hope, and hope is a very dangerous thing to lose."

"He'll slow me down," Loki protested.

"This is his quest just as much as yours," Heimdall said. "They are his memories, after all."

Loki groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Well, what did I come back to the ship for, then?"

"I was wondering that, too," Thor said thoughtfully. "The objects are all pretty immediate, so they shouldn't take us more than a day to find. We don't really need any supplies besides the weapons on us, so I didn't understand why we weren't just setting off towards the castle."

"Speaking of which," Brunnhilde put it. "Your all-seeing friend here got us the parts we need to fix the ship, and a couple of people to help do it, too. So we should be good to go by the time you get back."

"Well, that's a relief," Loki said. "Now when we go and steal something that's likely very important to the king, we'll have already gotten our ticket out of here." He glanced at the palace and squinted against the sun. "This'll be interesting," he said "Fine, Thor, if you're coming, then we're going. Now."

"Excellent," Thor said, smiling. He kissed Brunnhilde's hand. "Until we meet again, my lady," he said, and she giggled and shoved his shoulder. "Get going, Your Majesty," she said.

Heimdall stopped Loki just as he was heading off. "You are hiding something from me," he said. "I do not know what, but it makes me disinclined to trust the change of heart that seems to have come upon you. I will be watching you, and if you steer him wrong, you'll have me to answer to."

Loki just smirked. "I should think that'd be understood by now, don't you?" He asked. "We can stop doing this little dance."

Thor was a little quieter on this journey, though he still looked around at everything in such awe and delight that Loki turned him into an elephant just to knock some of the happiness out of him. Besides, it did wonders to lift his own spirits, and he was still laughing as he changed Thor back to himself.

"Why didn't you do that to the goblin?" Thor inquired of him.

"Because he was more useful to us with the ability to speak," Loki replied. "But don't think I wasn't tempted to turn him into a beetle and squash him under my boot."

Thor thought for a moment, then asked, "Do you do that sort of thing to me often?"

"Not so much anymore," Loki said. "We haven't really seen much of each other during these past several years."

"Why not?"

Loki inwardly cursed himself for telling the truth. Lying was better, lying was always better! How could he have forsaken that tactic that had so often been there for him? Well, he wasn't going to make that mistake twice. Not in a row, anyway.

"You've been on Midgard. You sort of joined a cult down there."

"What kind of a cult?"

"Avenging the earth. At least that's how you put it."

"That doesn't sound like a cult. That just sounds like a team."

"I suppose." Here he was, still telling the truth! What was wrong with him?

"But you and I," Thor continued. "We were close then, were we?"

"Um…" Loki looked at him. And for once, he didn't know what the correct answer would be, whether he was trying to lie or trying to be honest. _Were_ they close? He supposed, yes, in their childhoods, they would have considered themselves to be the best of friends. But that was a very long time ago. A lot had happened since those days. They had pushed each other further and further away, and Loki was blaming Thor for that just as much as himself. But however he answered his brother now, either fact of fiction, would set the tone for the rest of the quest.

"We haven't seen much of each other lately," he repeated, for lack of anything better.

"Well, then," Thor said. "Now seems a good a time as any to get reacquainted." He held out his hand. "Hello," he said. "I am Thor, Son of Odin, God of Thunder, King of Asgard. Apparently."

Loki's lips twitched in amusement. "Good to see you picked those titles right back up."

"Well, somebody has to bear them."

Loki hesitantly took his hand. "I am Loki," he said. "Of Asgard. And I'm you're only living relative, so basically if you die those titles will fall to me."

"Well, it's a good thing you don't want to kill me then, isn't it?" Thor laughed.

Loki did the same, but it sounded more forced than he meant it to. "Oh, you have no idea."

Thor looked up at the castle. "Do we have a plan of attack?" he asked.

Loki looked straight ahead of them. "Well, first we have to get through the marketplace," he said. "But I've got a few things I can try once we need to get in. Theoretically we get in and get out without any attacking, because that would take time, and I'm really not in the mood."

"We'll need a disguise then," Thor said. "We don't look anything like the common folk."

Loki raised his eyebrows. "Yes…yes that's…actually very perceptive of you."

Thor beamed, and then looked down in surprise as his kingly garb was replaced with the rags worn by the impoverished. He glanced up to see Loki wearing something similar. "How did…"

"Yeah, yeah, it's one of my very impressive tricks, I know," Loki said. "Come on, just keep your head down and keep walking. If we make an impression, that'll be bad for us later."

Thor silently complied, and walked beside his brother as they both shoved their way through the dirty, noisy crowds. Loki felt the urge to whip them all into shape rise up in him, but he just shut his ears and kept walking. He wondered how Thor was taking it, and raised his eyes only slightly to get a look at his face. Thor's eye was even bigger then when they'd been walking in the forest, but though he was peeping about at everything in sight, he was keeping his head mostly down, and not allowing himself to get distracted. Loki was impressed, even more so because he hadn't expected to be.

But of course, this was the one moment where neither was watching where they were going, and they bumped into a woman, while she in turn bumped into the apple cart behind her. Thor was instantly fussing over her. "Apologies, my good woman," he said. "We meant no offense."

The woman, who had gray wisps of hair slipping out from under her headscarf, and a very plain face, looked at them with a worried frown and clutched the baby she was carrying close to her chest. "You," she breathed. "How can you be here?"

"What?" Thor asked, but Loki grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

"I told you not to make an impression!" he hissed.

"Well you bumped into her, too," Thor said. "And I wasn't going to leave without apologizing! Who is she, by the way?"

"How could I possibly know who she is?"

"She knew who we were," Thor pointed out.

"No," Loki said. "She _thought_ she knew who we were, and that means we've left an impression. We have to get that Horn before she starts spreading the word."

They managed to skirt through the rest of the marketplace without an encounter, and once they reached the palace doors, Loki took one look at the guard uniforms and changed their clothes to look like them.

"Now I did have this plan to get in favor with the king, and eventually steal the Horn when he trusted me," he admitted. "But now we're pressed for time, so we're just going to have to get in there and hope we can find it on our own."

"I don't think that'll be too difficult to do," Thor said as they were permitted to walk through the gates.

"Really, and why is that?"

Thor pointed above the throne. "Because that certainly looks like a Horn of Plenty to me."


	5. Chapter 5- Get Help

Loki crossed his arms and turned his calculating eyes on the Horn for so long that Thor began fidgeting. "What are we waiting for?" he asked. "Can't we just go and get it?"

"It's not as simple as that," Loki said. "There are still guards around, if you'll notice, and I don't know if there are any alarm systems."

Thor laughed. "It's a fantasy world, Loki. You said yourself that we landed in a fairy tale."

"Which is exactly why there would be magic guarding it," Loki replied.

"I don't think there is," Thor said.

"Well there's an informed opinion," Loki said, and shrugged. "But sure, why don't we go with that."

"Great!" Thor said. He gave a cry and shouted "The castle is on fire! Clear out; I'll save the Horn!" He then charged for the throne as the guards began scrambling. Some didn't believe him, and some did, but the outcome was that there was great confusion while Thor grabbed the Horn and ran back to his brother. Loki was standing with his face in one hand, barely daring to look through his fingers as the chaos. Thor was beaming as he ran up.

"Way to make an impression," Loki said sarcastically, but Thor was in too good of a mood to mind.

"We've got what we came for, now let's go!" Thor said, and took off running.

Loki followed, but stopped when he saw a servant carrying a wine goblet. The servant was startled to see this strange guard say to him, "I'm going to need that."

"No," said the servant. "It's for the king!"

He was then knocked out from behind, as the Loki in front of him disappeared, and the Loki behind him picked up the fallen goblet. "I wasn't asking." As Thor looked at him in confusion, Loki held out his hand. "Give me the Horn."

The brothers were almost at the border of the marketplace when they were cornered by about six guards. Thor seemed ready to take them, but Loki put out his hand and shook his head just slightly. The Horn was snatched out of his hand, and they were escorted to a cell back into the castle. The entire escapade had lasted all of three minutes, and was over so quickly that Thor had to stop and wonder if it had really happened, or if his clouded brain was still trying to make up for the missing pieces. Whatever the case, it was making him very frustrated, and he paced up and down the cell with clenched fists, occasionally banging the walls and demanding to be let out. His energy did give out though, after several hours, and he leaned against the wall in exhaustion, looking for the first time at his cellmate, who had been sitting in the corner with a calm demeanor ever since he'd been put there.

"I don't like this," he said. "I will not be caged like some wild beast!"

"Mm, yes, I guess this is your first experience being locked up," Loki said, crossing his arms. "Not very pleasant, is it?"

"Why didn't you let me fight them?" Thor asked. "I could have easily taken them all down."

Loki smirked. "And that's your solution to everything, isn't it?" he asked. "Punching your way out. No good would have come of it, Brother; prison was inevitable. We saved time by going willingly."

"How is this saving time?" Thor asked. "We could be here for days, weeks, months. I'll go mad if I have to stay here much longer."

"You won't have to," Loki answered. "Because we're going to do—and I cannot believe the words are coming out of my mouth—we're going to do 'get help.'"

"We're going to do what?"

A flicker of pain crossed Loki's face, but was gone in an instant. "Right…you don't remember that either. Well, essentially I play dead, and you call for help. When the help arrives, you throw me at them, and then there's our exit."

A superior smile spread across Thor's face. "That sounds like punching our way out."

"Yes, well you did come up with it," Loki replied. "Most of it, anyway. Though we didn't have any real need to use it when we were children—I expect you wanted to humiliate me more than anything else. But it will work, and I happened to think of it only because we recently did it. Don't get used to it; it won't happen again."

He fell into silence again, and Thor marveled at how patient he could be, just sitting with his back against the wall, his head only barely tilting to one side so he could see anyone who might come. But Thor didn't have that patience, even now, and he was getting restless again. He knew he had to start talking again, just to calm his nerves.

"You said you're my only living relative," he started.

"Yep."

"What happened to everyone else?"

"They died."

"Mmhm, I sort of figured that one out for myself," Thor informed him. "That's what you being 'my only living relative' means."

Loki moved only his eyes towards him. "You do know our home planet was destroyed, right?"

"Yes, Heimdall told me as much. Is that when the rest of our family died? Our parents?"

Loki didn't answer, but Thor pressed on. "How did I get this?" he asked, gesturing to his eye patch. "It feels new."

"Look, I'm not going to relay your entire life story to you, Thor, so why don't you just be patient and hope that we aren't being seriously played by that complete ignoramus of a goblin."

Thor saw this was going nowhere, and crossed his arms in resignation, leaning against the wall opposite of Loki. He began trying desperately to remember something, anything, which he didn't like to do all that much because it was too depressing. But he was happily called out of it by Loki saying in a soft voice, "We had a sister."

Thor raised his head. "Had? She's gone, too?"

Loki nodded. "She went down with Asgard. And we had to let her, because she was going to kill us all." He paused for a moment and pursed his lips reflectively before deciding to add, "We didn't even know she existed until about a month ago. And even after that, we never really knew her."

Thor was watching Loki's face intently, but Loki was continuing to watch the outside, even though his eyes didn't seem to see anything. "What was her name?" Thor asked, in a voice that wouldn't have even broken eggshells.

"Hela," Loki gave an ironic smirk. "The Goddess of Death. There was a worse sibling than me, and no one even knew! Except Odin, of course. How he must have laughed at my feeble attempts. Should I be insulted that he never felt the need to banish _me_?"

"What are you talking about?" Thor started, but then Loki urgently sat up straight and uncrossed his arms.

"They're coming," he said, jumping up. He briefly shook his arms out, and looked at Thor. "You know what you're doing?"

Thor nodded, and Loki realized that was all he had to go on. He looped his arm around his brother's shoulders, closed his eyes, and went limp, feeling an odd sense that he had just done this, not even two days ago. That, he had sworn to himself, was the very last time he would ever agree to it, and now _he_ was the one who'd suggested it. And this Thor didn't even remember doing it, so there was a very good chance that it would fail.

But it didn't. Thor played his part well, and as Loki sailed through the air and knocked down the three or four guards that were blocking their path, he was surprised at how familiar that too seemed. He supposed it was something to know that Thor's body remembered even what his mind didn't.

And his mind definitely was still lacking, because they'd both taken off running and had almost completely run through the entire marketplace when Thor suddenly stopped and gasped. "Wait," he said. "We have to go back for the Horn!"

"No," Loki said. "We don't."

"What are you talking about, we need it!"

"And we've got it."

"Loki, I saw them snatch it right out of your hands. Please don't tell me you're losing your mind too; I think we've only got room for one amnesia case."

Loki held up his hand and showed Thor the Horn. Thor squinted at it and blinked, trying to understand. "The goblet I stole," Loki explained. "I made it look like the Horn. That's what they took."

"Where have you been hiding that?" was the first thing Thor asked.

Loki gave a condescending laugh. "I've never told you all the tricks I can perform," he said. "I'm not about to start now."

"Well why didn't we just steal a goblet and give that to the goblin?" Thor wondered.

"Because it's only an illusion. The people at the castle will discover the illusion eventually; probably the next time they try to use it. The goblin would have discovered it much sooner." Loki let Thor gape at him for a moment longer before hiding the Horn again and continuing to walk.

"You're supposed to put it in the bag," Thor reminded him.

"They took the bag."

Thor looked at him skeptically. "No they didn't."

Loki smirked. "Yeah well, I'll put it in the bag when I'm good and ready," he said.

Thor still looked skeptical, but he shook it off and said "So we have to look for the poorest family at the edge of town now, right? That's rather vague, how are we supposed to do that?"

"That's not a problem," Loki said. "I saw their house as we were coming in. We'll come into sight of it in a minute. And once you see it, you'll know it couldn't be anything else."


	6. Chapter 6- The Poorest Family

**A/N: I think I should probably take this time to thank the people who have favorited, followed, or reviewed this story. Thank you thank you! It may seem like not a big deal, but if you've ever written a story, you know how exciting it is to get any form of recognition.**

 **Drumboy100: Haha, thanks so much! Those were some of my favorite lines to write. :)**

 **joycelyn. : In response to you latest review, yeah, I probably will write an angsty Loki story some day, but for now I'm still under the impression that, except for the couple meltdowns he had in the first _Thor_ , Loki really doesn't like people to know how he feels or what he's thinking. I've been kind of respecting that even when writing from his point of view. ****There's a _leetle_ bit of that kind of drama later in this story, but for now, I'm glad you like this lighthearted story. Thanks for your reviews, I've been loving them!**

 **This chapter has a kinda ununsual situation for Loki, so if anyone else wants to review and tell me that it either worked or that they're ready to gouge their eyeballs out (assuming you can tell what situation I'm talking about), you should know that I do click on the profiles of those who review me. I always like to see if they've written a story I might be interested in, since they clearly liked mine!**

 **Okay, I've been talking too long. Here we go!**

Thor had to agree that the house Loki had picked certainly looked like the poorest. Not that any of the houses and cottages surrounding the edge of town, and running into the marketplace, looked particularly well-off. They were all simple, ramshackle, and often falling apart. It's just that this one in particular looked more like a glorified lean-to. It did have four walls, if they could be called walls. They looked like large pieces of scrap that were pushed together in such a wobbly way that the straw roof looked ready to fall off in any direction. It had the sad, trampled remains of a garden surrounding it, but the garbage and waste of the town had taken over. And it was all grey, every bit, from the straw on the roof to the dead flower beds in the yard.

"This is undoubtedly the worst off house in the kingdom," Thor said. "But are we sure anyone's living in it? We were supposed to find the people, not the place."

Loki's response was to march right up to the house and rap on the door. He did so lightly, because even though he already mostly performed his actions very softly and evenly, there was a legitimate fear that one little push and the whole house would collapse.

A woman opened the door, and she looked at them in as much surprise as they did her. It was the same plain woman that they'd bumped into in the marketplace. She was still holding her baby, and she stared at them with piercing eyes, as if trying desperately to work something out. Loki's first instinct was to turn tail and get as far away from this stranger who recognized them as possible, but then in an instant he remembered that he could talk his way around anything. And it would be better if they could set this woman straight.

"You're still here," she said. "Why?"

"Our ship's broken down," Thor offered helpfully, just as Loki was about to open his mouth.

"You'd better come in," she said, opening the door wider.

In any other situation, Loki wouldn't have done it, but he knew they needed the bracelet. He could only hope that it was really here, and they wouldn't have to go through another house. It was actually rather fortunate that the resident they needed to speak to was quite willing to have them enter her home. It would have been a waste of time to try and come up with an excuse to come in and search her.

"You can have a seat," she said. "And I'm sorry, but Cari's waiting for me to feed her. Would you mind watching her for a minute?" And before Loki quite knew what was going on, there was a baby in his arms.

Just as smoothly as he'd been given her, he turned and held her out to Thor. But Thor began snickering and shook his head. "No, she gave her to you," he whispered. "You're the one with both your eyes!"

Loki had experienced a lot of new and unwelcome emotions in the past couple of days, but this new feeling of disorientation was his least favorite yet. It shouldn't have been possible for this woman to do that to him. He shouldn't have been beaten into submission so easily. He stared down into the sparkly blue eyes of the baby, who looked at him in wonder for a minute, and then began gurgling with pleasure.

Thor leaned over and whispered, "I think you're supposed to cradle the head."

"Shut up!" Loki hissed, to the great amusement of his brother, who continued to snicker.

"So," Thor said to the woman. "I just recently had my memories taken, so forgive me if I don't know who you are."

"My name is Gilliam," the woman said, as she began mashing up some fruit. "And you don't have to pretend that you lost your memories, Your Majesty, I'm perfectly aware that neither of you know who I am."

"He's not pretending," Loki said, trying to free a strand of his hair from Cari's clutches.

Gilliam turned around and looked at them. "No?" she asked. "Well that's…that's very unusual. How did that happen?"

"Some goblin blew a magic flower in my face," Thor said. "So I'm told."

"Oh." Understanding washed over her face. "The Ryomem flower. Those are so rare now I'd nearly forgotten what they're able to do. It's a very unattractive flower, so people don't ever seek them out, or try to cultivate them."

"It won't just wear off, will it?" Thor asked.

Gilliam shook her head. "No, and it can only be reversed by the one who did it. I'm afraid on the few occasions when such a thing has happened here…those people never did regain their memories. I'm sorry."

Thor shrugged. "Well, I can't miss what I don't remember."

"But as to who I am," Gilliam went on. "Well, that's sort of difficult to explain. You may have already noticed, but this land looks very similar to the realm you knew as Asgard."

"Does it?" Loki asked innocently. "Are you sure?"

"There's a reason for it," Gilliam replied. "This is a mirrored realm. It is Asgard, essentially, but it has been put through one of those twisted mirrors that makes your face and body look distorted. That's what this place is: distorted. It is a mockery of the true Asgard. For everything and everyone that you had there, there is a crude copy here. A palace, an Odin, even a Warriors Three." She turned away from the counter with a bowl of fruit and looked at Loki. "And the goblin who did this to your brother? He's our _you_."

"I don't know if I'd go so far as to say _that_ ," Loki said, shooting a look at Thor and daring him to laugh. "He looks more like a servant we had once."

Gilliam tried to take Cari back from Loki, but the baby gave a scream of protest and held on to her current caretaker. Thor tried not to laugh, he really did, but it came out anyway in a series of unattractive choking noises. Gilliam sighed and left her in Loki's lap, instead pulling up a chair and spoon-feeding the child that way. Loki was instantly on alert to use his magic to stop any mess that might occur, but fortunately for him, the baby was old enough to allow herself to be fed neatly.

"You never knew about us," Gilliam went on. "Or perhaps some of you did, but I do not know of any. To you we are invisible, nonexistent, and so it's a miracle you were able to break in here at all. I suppose you broke the barrier when your ship started crashing. But we could see _you_ , and everything that went on up there. The only curious thing is that no one here seems to know that they are in a mirror world. Because you know what a mirror world is, don't you?"

Thor shook his head, but at the same time Loki nodded. "It's a world that doesn't exist," he said slowly. "It really is only a reflection, and nothing more. But you, you know where you are?"

"I do not hail from this land," she said. "I was banished here…it's…not important why. What is important is that I am the only one here who actually exists. Nothing else is real."

Thor furrowed his brow. "But there are people using their parts to fix our ship," he said. "Are those parts not real?"

"They won't last forever, no," she said. "But they will be enough to get you out of here. And you should leave, as soon as possible. Because now that the real Asgard is gone, the reflection will diminish. And quickly."

"How are _you_ going to get out of here?" Thor asked.

Gilliam smiled. "I'll be fine," she said. "My banishment was to be lifted at the end of the world. I guess that means now. I only hope that my daughter is real enough to come with me; her father was from this world, so technically she's not…she's not actually completely real."

"Of course she is," Thor said with a smile, stroking the head of the baby. "If half of her isn't real, that means there isn't anything not to be real, and therefore the real that is there makes her completely real."

Loki and Gilliam stared at him. "Right," Loki said. "Let's all pretend that made sense."

"It checks out," Thor said, nodding confidently.

Cari began to squirm and fuss, and Gilliam pulled a red bracelet out of her pocket and dangled it in front of her. It calmed her down, and Gilliam was able to take her from Loki. "Excuse me," she said, setting the bracelet down on the table. "I'll be back in a moment."

As she took her child into the other room, which could only have been either a bedroom or a washroom, or both, Thor and Loki stared at the bracelet.

"Well, there it is," Loki said, as if that weren't completely obvious.

"Loki, we can't do this," Thor said urgently. "We can't steal from her."

"Of course we can," Loki said, but found his hand unwilling to reach for it.

"Look around, it's literally the only nice thing she has," Thor protested. "It's probably the only real thing she has, too. Otherwise why would the goblin want it?"

"You have no way of knowing if any of that's true," Loki said, but he still sat unmoving, just staring at it.

"I'd rather create a whole set of new memories than make this woman's life more miserable than it already is," Thor said. "We can't trade for it, and we can't buy it. Not even an illusion would work in this case. Come on, Loki, you know we can't do this."

Loki sighed and closed his eyes, turning away from it. "Yeah," he said. "I know."


	7. Chapter 7- The Beginning of the End

"We should leave," Thor whispered. "Now, before she comes back."

"Yeah." Loki stood up, and they both made a leap for the door and ran through it, knowing she would have heard them and come to investigate. They began walking briskly away, and Loki sighed. "Well," he said. "I guess there's no point in going to Sindar now." He gave a little smile of triumph. "And that's why I didn't want to put the Horn in the bag. I didn't want to give that thing an advance on his end of the bargain, and now I'm glad I made that decision."

"Yes," Thor said. "Very wise. We should return it, however."

"What? No, we don't have time for that!"

"Why not?"

"You heard what she said, this planet is dying," Loki said. He pointed up at the sky. "Look, you can see it getting ready to happen. The sky is starting to flake gold."

Thor squinted with his good eye. "Oh, you can barely see that."

"And probably no one has yet," Loki said. "We can beat the traffic if we leave now."

"Fine, then let's just toss it in a ditch," Thor pressed. "Then we won't have stolen it."

"Why does it matter so much? Nothing that happens here is real anyway. It'll probably just disappear once we take off, or shortly after."

Thor didn't answer. He'd turned back to look at the shack they'd just left, and he also could just make out a troupe of soldiers marching towards it. "Loki."

"What?"

"We have to go back," Thor said urgently. "They're coming for her."

Loki turned around and gave a slight frown at the soldiers. "Why would they be coming for her?"

"Maybe not her. Maybe us. See, _this_ is why we should give the Horn back."

"I doubt it. How could they have known that's where we went?"

"It doesn't matter, we have to go back and save her and her child," Thor repeated.

Loki shook his head. "That's not our fight. And if they weren't looking for us before, they will be once they see us."

"Augh, what is it with you and never wanting to fight?" Thor demanded. "Come on, if I can't have my old memories back, at least don't make me regret this one."

Loki looked back up at the sky. But he couldn't really tell if it looked flakier now, or if he was just noticing it more. He gave a subtle roll of his eyes and said, "I won't stop you, Brother."

Thor grinned, and then gave a war cry as he charged back towards the house. Loki rolled his eyes again, but this time he was also sporting a small grin. He ran after his brother a bit more quietly, though no less urgently. The soldiers had reached the house and broken the door down, which was truly quite a dangerous thing to do. But they never made it inside, because with another war cry, Thor leaped at them and crushed two or three. They were on top of him in an instant, like wolves trying to bring down their prey, and it seemed that for every one Thor was able to throw off of him, two more took his place. Eventually he remembered his sword, and pulled it out. But even if the "get help" move had come naturally to him, fighting with a sword came considerably less so. Perhaps it was more effective that way, since there was nothing wrong with the strength of his grip, and the soldiers had no way of anticipating which direction his next swing was going to fly in or come from.

Loki was able to piggyback on some of the distraction that Thor caused, and slipped in knives into the backs of quite a few before Thor caught on to what he was doing. "Loki!" he said. "We're not here to _kill_ them!"

"That's what you do with enemies!" Loki reminded him. "If I'm going to fight, I'm going to commit! They're not real anyway!"

"I _know_ that, you don't have to keep hitting me over the head with that knowledge!" Thor said, punching an oncoming soldier in the face, and knocking him down. "I believe I was present when that was being explained!"

In response Loki grabbed another soldier's arm, twisted his arm behind his back, and slit his throat. Thor picked up a soldier and threw it at him. "Think of the children, Loki!"

"I _am_."

A soldier came running up behind Thor, and Thor reached back, grabbed the arm, and pulled him over his head until the soldier landed on the ground with a cry. Then he turned and saw another soldier throw his torch on top of the roof. Thor angrily tackled the soldier and pummeled his face, then rushed into the house. Loki began wondering why so many soldiers had come just for a middle-aged woman and her baby. They were becoming overwhelming, even for his topnotch fighting skills, and he was just about to pull out his magic when Thor crashed through the side of the house, carrying its residents. The soldiers were startled by the noise, and that gave Loki enough of a distraction to incapacitate the rest. Thor jogged clear of the house, which fell over with plenty of creaks and crashes before blazing up as the rest of the flames caught on. Loki ran to catch up with them, as Thor set Gilliam down.

Gilliam clutched Cari to her chest and looked anxiously at the house. "Thank you," she said. "Both of you, very much."

"Sorry about the house," Thor said apologetically.

She shook her head. "I told you, I was about to leave it anyway."

"What were they there for?" Loki asked

"Oh, well, I'm sort of the problem child of this planet," Gilliam said, trying to laugh. "I think the people here can sense that I'm realer than they are, and that frustrates them, though they don't understand why. So somebody started a rumor that I was a witch, and drove me to the edge of town, you know, like you do. Hence the garbage heap."

Thor looked around reflectively. "And yet this planet looks so beautiful upon first glance. You'd never think of it as the living Hell it is."

"Well, that's the way it goes," Gilliam shrugged. "I married a soldier in the hopes they'd get off my back, but they just ended up stripping him of his rank. Then he died, and that made them even madder."

Loki considered. "They _did_ come because of us," he realized. "They'd had trouble at the castle, and the prisoners escaped, so they came to you, the source of all their problems. And they brought as many as they could, because who knows what sort of tricks you might have had up your sleeve."

Gilliam nodded. "Don't feel bad, though," she said. "You came back to save us, so if there was any room for blame before, there isn't now. And anyway, I feel honored to have finally met the real live royalty of Asgard."

"You should come with us," Thor offered.

She grinned and shook her head. "Really, I'll be fine. It won't be long now. Soon even the inhabitants will realize that something is wrong, and that's when I'll be free to go."

Thor looked doubtful, but he nodded. "We'd best be on our way, then."

"Oh!" she said suddenly. "I wanted to give you this. I thought of it as I snatched it up when you were rescuing me, and then I nearly forgot." She pulled the red bracelet out of her pocket and held it out to him. "It's real," she assured him. "It's not actually worth anything, but I thought you might like it anyway."

Thor engulfed her in a hug. "Absolutely," he said. "I can't thank you enough."

She laughed as she disentangled herself from his arms, then gave them both a little wave before heading off towards the marketplace, holding Cari as close as she could.

Thor smiled smugly and held the bracelet out to show Loki. Loki was already looking at it, with an almost perplexed look on his face. "How…did you do that?" he breathed.

"I've got no idea, but we've suddenly got a reason to go to Sindar!" Thor grinned, as he pocketed the bracelet. He leaned down and peered into his brother's face. "Loki?"

Loki started and blinked. "Yeah…" he said. "Yeah." He pulled out the key that the goblin had given him, and looked at it hesitantly. Thor watched him eagerly as he pushed the key into the air, and turned it.

A red door appeared and opened, just like the goblin had said it would. Thor was the first to walk through, and after trying to fathom the recent events for a moment longer, Loki followed him.


	8. Chapter 8- Sindar

Sindar was a very different planet then the one they'd just left. Neither Thor nor Loki had ever heard of it, but given the fact that there were a lot of planets out there, that wasn't very surprising. This one seemed to be bathed in an eternal sunset. The sky was a mess of purple and pink and orange, while the rest of the world was hidden in shadow, except for where the sun still reached. There was a stillness about the place, a peacefulness, just like you'd expect when watching a sunset. There was a very small lake a few yards away, and its reflection of the heavens made it look like the colors were all paints that had spilled over onto each other. There was a river leading up and away into yet another forest, but that was all that could be seen for miles. If there was a palace, or a kingdom, or really any kind of civilization out there somewhere, it wasn't making itself visible.

Loki gave his surroundings one glance, with his sharp eyes missing nothing, and took it all in. He hadn't even finished exiting the door when he'd made a mental picture in his head, and decided what their next move would be.

Thor was standing very still, touching his forehead, and when Loki walked by him he immediately came to life and grabbed his shoulders. "L-Loki!" he cried. "Loki!"

"It's just a planet, Thor, you've been on new planets before," Loki answered, delicately removing Thor's hands.

Thor still looked confused for a minute, but then he relaxed and nodded. "I knew that," he assured Loki. "Sindar? Sindar."

"We're going to have to follow the river," Loki said. "People always live close to the river."

"As you wish," Thor said cheerfully.

As they walked along, Loki continued to think about the woman they'd just left. He didn't want to bring it up aloud, because he knew he could figure this out. He'd always known how to manipulate and sweet-talk people into giving him what he wanted, so why was this such a mystery to him?

Thor looked over at his wrinkled brow and smiled smugly. "You're wondering why Gilliam gave us the bracelet," he guessed.

"No, I was wondering how long it would take you to again ask me something that I don't feel inclined to give you the answer to."

"Of course," Thor said. "But just so you know, she gave it to us because we did the right thing."

"Yeah? And how exactly did she know we'd done 'the right thing'?" Loki asked impatiently, and accidentally.

"Well," Thor said. "She didn't, I suppose. She didn't know we went there to steal it. I'm not sure she even knew we ever left. And yet, we _did_ do the right thing, and we were rewarded for it."

Loki stared at him in disgust. "Oh, that's so something that only happens in fairy tales."

"But we _are_ in a fairy tale, remember?" Thor asked. "I agreed with you when you said that, and I still do. Everything about this is completely insane and fantastical, and yet here we are. We can't help it if that's the planet we crashed on. Of course," he added with a grin. "It's my personal opinion that the universe wanted to show you what happens when you do something noble and heroic, for a change, instead of double-crossing it."

"I haven't double-crossed anyone since this whole thing began, so how could you know that?"

"Oh, Heimdall told me alllll about you," Thor said, smiling almost maliciously.

"Of course he did," Loki said bitterly.

Thor knew there was another point Loki wouldn't be satisfied on, and waited for him to bring it up. He wasn't disappointed.

"But why did she think to give us the bracelet in particular?" Loki asked. "Again, there was no context for it; she would have had no idea that's what we needed or wanted."

"You seem an intelligent sort of fellow," Thor said, clapping Loki on the back. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."

They didn't have much else to say in the remainder of their journey. Thor now saw fit to remain silent, which contented Loki just fine, despite some initial annoyance at that last statement. It gave him time to strategize. This sword belonged to a Lady Gallivant. Stealing it would probably not be as easy as stealing the Horn, but he made a mental note to at least not let her talk about herself. He didn't need a repeat of the bracelet incident, even if that had worked out in the end.

He'd been right to follow the river, because when they came to the end of it, the forest just stopped, and the water ran right up to a simple structure. It looked like it was probably a palace, but though elegant and made of silver, it was very small. The odd thing about the river, however, was that it encircled the palace like a kind of moat, and then dropped off the cliff behind it in a waterfall.

"Downstream both ways," Loki said. "Spooky."

They were greeted by two guards, who could only have been identified by the helmets they wore and the spears they carried. Otherwise they looked as if they might have been anybody, as they wore no armor or anything else that suggested battle.

Loki stepped forward. "The King of Asgard seeks an audience with…" he started, but one of the guards interrupted him.

"Yes, we know who you are. The Lady Gallivant is prepared to see you," he said, and opened the doors of the palace.

Thor and Loki warily walked through, and Thor leaned over to Loki. "It's very alarming to hear that they're expecting you," he said. "Heimdall's all right, so if he's ever done something like that, I can imagine I was probably fine with it. But with anyone else it's just unnerving."

They were led into a hall which, just like the outside, was very small but very elegant. And sitting in the throne was a very tall woman, who looked both old and young at the same time. She had long, flowing black hair and an equally long and flowy purple gown. She was wearing some sort of bright red headdress, but it didn't look like a crown so much as a veil of metal. She looked directly at them as they approached. Thor bowed down evenly and without hesitation. Loki stiffened, as the last time he'd bowed was years ago, before Thor's initial coronation day, before he'd learned he was a frost giant. He wasn't sure he remembered how to do it.

But then reason reminded him that if he was going to make a good impression, he had to do it. So he did, and oh, how loud the shattering of his pride seemed to sound in his ears. He couldn't help wondering, for a fleeing moment, if Thor was really worth all of this.

"Rise," she said to them, in a voice that sounded like it was made of the sunset outside. "Tell me why you've come."

"We hear you have a sword," Thor said. "A Sword of Victory? We've come for it."

Loki hadn't anticipated quickly enough that Thor was going to speak. He felt like he should have, by now, seeing as how Thor's tongue had never gone where Loki wanted it to.

Although, thinking back, Thor had actually always managed to get them where they needed to be.

Still, stealing the sword was now off the table. And if they weren't able to buy a simple bracelet off a peasant woman, there was no way they could get this. Wonderful.

The Lady raised an eyebrow. "Have you now?" she asked. "Do you know what it is you ask?"

"Actually no, to be honest," Thor admitted.

"Then you do not ask of it for yourselves," she observed.

"We do indeed, Your Majesty," Loki put in. "It will help us accomplish our task at hand."

"I see," she said. "Well, the Sword is called that of Victory because anyone who wields it will not lose the battle he fights. That makes it a very dangerous weapon to just give away. However, I have no need of the Sword, nor indeed was it even mine to begin with. It was a gift, but I am happy to pass it on to you, if you are worthy of it."

It was all Loki could do not to roll his eyes. Great, here was the whole worthy or not worthy story again! And he knew which he was. And which his brother was.

So he stepped back and gestured to Thor. "You're up," he said.

"There is a test," Lady Gallivant said. "Which both of you may take, and if either of you pass, I shall bestow the Sword upon him. Only one with a great strength of mind and will shall pass."

"Great!" Thor said. "When can we start?"

"Soon," she said. "It is not a long test, but it will take me some time to prepare. I will have you escorted to a room where you may wait, and then I will send for you, one at a time."

When Loki and Thor were shown to one of the probably ten at best rooms in the palace, Thor at once sat down on the red bedspread with a sigh. "Well, this is a simple one!" he said. "One of us is bound to pass, and then that'll be that!"

Loki held out his hand. "Let me see the bracelet?"

Thor handed it to him, and then watched as a tiny smile came upon Loki's face.

"You liked the baby, didn't you?" Thor asked.

Loki quickly looked up at him. "What makes you say that?"

"Because you're smiling at her toy."

"I don't think this was just Cari's," Loki said. "I think it was Gilliam's first. And I think it was more valuable than she let on."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," said Loki. "That I believe Gilliam used to live on Sindar."


	9. Chapter 9- Loki's Test

**A/N: Soo I'm taking this time once again to acknowledge my reviewers, because even though I think replying to reviews is sorta unprofessional and pulls you out of the story, I'm so grateful to the people who have taken the time to say such nice things about this one.**

 **joyceyln. and Drumboy100, you guys are the best. I wish reviewers like you upon every writer ever, and I love your profile pictures! I want to reply to all your reviews, but I would go off on a ramble and never stop, so just know that I read them all, I love them all, and I've rewritten some of the final chapters because of things you've said. Thank you!**

 **kalimecat: You thinking this would make a good spinoff series is literally one of the highest compliments I've ever received. Thank you thank you!**

 **scarletdestiny: Thanks so much! It's encouraging to hear that you like the mythological setting; I was kind of nervous about pulling out of the MCU too much. But I mean, these guys DID originate in a fantasy setting!**

 **I probably won't do another author's note until the end, so I'll see you then, and I hope (like, really, nervously hope) that you enjoy these last several chapters!**

Thor looked dubiously at the bracelet, then back up at Loki's face. "You think Gilliam came from Sindar?" he asked. "How'd you get that from a bracelet?"

"The Queen's headdress," Loki answered. "You saw it, that spider web of red stones in her hair? This bracelet is made of the same ones."

Thor still looked doubtful. "And how are they different from every ruby ever?"

"Because they're not rubies," Loki said. "You don't remember being raised in a palace, but I do, and trust me, Frigga had a large enough collection of gems for us to know the difference between them."

"Who?" Thor asked.

Loki looked up at him sharply, and noticed that this stab of pain was worse than the previous times. "Our mother," he said. "But these are something else, something I've never seen before. Probably native to this planet. But in any case, they're definitely the same."

"So Gilliam had a bracelet from Sindar. That doesn't mean she's from here."

"She said she was banished from another planet, Thor," Loki reminded him. "And since the bracelet is real, that means she brought it with her from wherever she was banished from."

Thor nodded slowly. "Yes, I guess that makes sense. The queen probably knows her, then."

"The queen probably banished her," Loki pointed out. "Assuming I'm correct."

It actually wasn't more than half an hour before someone came for Loki. He hadn't even sat down yet before he was being taken back to a throne room now empty except for Lady Gallivant. He noticed that she now had the sword on her lap. He walked up to her, and she nodded at his escorts to leave them. When they were alone in the room, Loki tilted his head and closely examined her face, trying to read it.

"So this preparation you were doing," he said. "It really was just going and getting the sword?"

"I was learning about you," she said. "I know who you are of course, Loki Odinson. But I didn't know everything."

"And now?"

She smiled. "Why are you here?" she asked. "Why did you come?"

"I need the sword," he said, but she shook her head.

"No," she said. "That is merely a means to an end. But why is the end so important to you?"

Loki smirked. "Is this the test?" he asked. "You're just going to sit there and question me? What are you trying to do, turn me into the hero I never was? Or are you testing to see if I stay true to my purpose?"

"This is not the test," she replied. "This is merely an opportunity for you to ask questions of me. I know you have them."

"Why are you so willing to part with the sword?" he asked. "Do you expect me to believe that my brother and I are the first to come in search of it?"

"You are the first," she said. "This realm is very reclusive. This palace, these guards…that's all there is. There are no animals, no insects, no other people on Sindar. And as I said, this sword was a gift. I expected it to be sought after long ago. But though it is possible to find us, we are very small and tucked away. No one tried hard enough to find it."

"The goblin knew," Loki said. "Who is he?"

"He?" the Lady shook her head scornfully. "He is nothing. He thinks because he has a few tricks and an all-seeing mirror that he is something great, but he does not know anything at all. He does not know of the power of Sindar, or he would have never sent you here. He will fade with the rest of that mirrored Asgard, and he doesn't even know that, either."

Loki waited a moment before speaking again, still studying her, still trying to read her. "There is no test, right?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't there be?"

"Why _would_ there be? You've never had anyone come in search of it before, so you can't have been giving out tests. My guess is that you saw us coming, and you decided to manipulate us to the point where we could be manipulated no more. You'd interrogate us until you'd learned all you needed to know, and then you'd string us along until that dying planet is gone!"

She gave him a long look. "You act so differently when he's around," she said gently.

Loki's chest was heaving, and he feared if he lost his temper he wouldn't be able to regain it. "When who's around?"

"Your brother," she replied. "You bend down to his level and speak to him there. Always have. That's why he never sees you coming when you're about to betray him."

"I'm not going to betray him. Not this time."

"No? Then why haven't you told him what it is you've stolen? If you tell him now, he will be grateful to you for saving it. If you wait for him to find it, it will only tear you two apart. Again."

"Do not pretend to know me," Loki said coldly.

"You would have done better to let it burn in Asgard," she said, just as coldly. "You know there are those who seek it. And they _will_ find it."

Loki stared at her, willing his breathing to slow down to the calm rate he was used to. "Why was Gilliam banished?"

For the first time, the Lady gave a small frown, as if she hadn't expected such a question. "What do you know of Gilliam?" she asked.

"What do you think? She was on the planet we just came from," Loki said, pulling the bracelet out and dangling it from his thumb. "This did come from here, did it not?"

She looked at the bracelet for a while, then nodded. "Yes, it did," she said. "And yes, Gilliam was banished from here. But if she has not chosen to tell you why, then it is none of your concern."

"It _is_ my concern!" Loki snapped, slamming his fists into a pillar. "Because she's on a dying planet, with a child that she isn't even sure can leave, and she chose to give me the one thing she had from home! What did she do that was so terrible that her own planet kicked her off? Because I recently met someone who was banished for acts so vile and horrendous that nothing I've done could compete with it. And Gilliam isn't even as terrible as _I_ am."

The Lady watched as Loki again fought to regain moderate control of his breathing. When his chest was rising and falling as imperceptibly as was considered normal, she spoke. "We will send for her before the planet dies," she said. "And her child will be able to come with her. I do not know why she gave you that bracelet, unless it was that she knew it would not be long before she was home. Either that or she could sense that you needed it. She is Sindarin, after all."

When Loki offered no further comment, the queen took the sword in one hand, and abruptly stood up. She walked behind her throne and pulled down the shimmering silver curtain, which looked like a thousand shooting stars as it crumpled to the ground. There was a mirror behind it, and when she slightly lifted her hand there appeared images in the mirror.

"Look," she commanded.

Loki did, albeit distrustfully, because he had a sneaking suspicion that they'd finally come to the test. But when he looked he was surprised to see himself, as a baby, being rescued by Odin. His mind began working overtime to try and figure out what this woman's game was, and to do everything he could to protect himself from it. The image transitioned to scenes from his childhood, snippets, from the time he'd turned into a snake just so he could stab his brother to Odin telling them the story of the frost giants, and how only one of them could be king. Loki had always known it would be Thor. Even when he hadn't. Because there'd been clues, and hints, all through their childhoods up until they were adults, that Thor was the favorite; Thor was the one being prepared for the throne; Thor was given all the presents and taken on all the trips to other realms. And the Lady showed each and every one of those. The sting was feeling very fresh for Loki, and all the reasons for him ruining his brother's coronation were seeming as justified to him now as they had then. He saw Odin finally revealing who he was, saw Thor's friends betray Loki just so they could go rescue the banished god, saw Thor fight him and Odin tell him that destroying Jotunheim was not what he wanted.

But if Loki thought all of that was bad, it only got worse. Because then came everything that happened after he fell into the chasm, watching the faces of his father and brother get smaller and smaller as he fell. The tortures he'd endured from Thanos and his henchman had been so terrible for him that he'd completely blacked out the memories when it was all over. He'd thought that the idea of taking over earth had been his idea, and though technically that desire had indeed been in him already, he could now see that he'd been manipulated. He would have never been king. If he'd succeeded in conquering earth, Thanos would have swooped in and taken it from him.

Loki was shown his father telling him he was only alive because of Frigga, and that he would be locked up for eternity, never seeing her again. Loki had known at the time that he would get out, somehow, but he couldn't have been sure that he'd be able to see his mother. Thank goodness she had broken the law and conjured images of herself to visit him. He knew he wouldn't have been able to cope if it hadn't been for her.

And then came the worst day that Loki had ever endured. He hadn't been there to protect her. He'd had nothing to do with her death—at least his conscience was clear on that point—but he knew, he knew he could have prevented it, if he'd been there. No one had told him when it happened, not until later, as an afterthought, but he'd known it anyway. And there was nothing he could have done to save his mother.

He closed his eyes here and turned away. "Stop it," he said softly.

"If I stop now, that means you will not have passed," the Lady answered, just as softly.

So he grit his teeth and turned back, only to see his father as he'd last seen him, banished to Norway. "It took me quite a while to break free from your spell," Odin said. "Frigga would have been proud."

He'd had a hard time stopping his tears the first time. Now he felt one sliding down his cheek, and after watching his father die again he shook his head and turned away again. "Stop it," he repeated. "Stop."

He knew he'd regret it later, and he hated himself for being so weak. There wasn't even that much more life to go. But it's a very powerful thing, watching every single moment in your life that made you miserable, one after the other, with no reprieve. He knew what was coming next, and he wasn't prepared to again see the blank look on Thor's face when he had no memory of him.

Lady Gallivant put her hand down, and the mirror went back to normal. Loki began taking shuddering breaths, trying to prevent any further tears from falling, and raised the tips of his fingers to get rid of the couple that had.

"What was that?" he demanded.

"Tests never seem relevant to the one who is taking it," the Lady said, but Loki shook his head.

"No," he said. "No, that's not good enough, I want to know exactly how that is supposed to determine whether I have a great strength of mind and will."

"You do," she said. "You very much do…it takes one just to endure all those things in the first place, not to mention watching them all play out, again. You've got one of the strongest minds or wills I've ever known."

"But I didn't pass because I didn't make it to the end?"

She shrugged. "That was the test," she said. "Believe it or not, it was not my creation. It's the test that goes with the sword. Because yes, watching everything terrible in one's life flash before their eyes does determine their strength. You are correct that I've never had to give this test before, and if there wasn't one already made for me, I'd probably have come up with an entirely different one.

Loki didn't say anything, so the Lady continued gently, "You know sometimes all it takes for a good person to turn sour is to see someone better than them? And sometimes all it takes for a villain to come back is to see someone worse than they are."

"Is there a point to that statement?" he asked sarcastically.

"Point being," she said. "That you've made some truly horrendous choices, Loki, but in the end, Hela may well have been your salvation. You saw someone infinitely worse than you attacking your home and your family, and you got defensive. There is hope for you yet."

He gave one last attempt to read her by staring into her purple eyes. "Who are you?" he asked.

She looked as deeply into his eyes. "Who do you think I am?"

"Not Lady Gallivant," he said, and she gave a small, regal laugh.

"It is a pretentious name, isn't it?" she asked. "And you are correct, it is not mine. I merely bear it for the time that I sit on this throne. But it does belong to somebody."

Loki narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Then you are not really the queen here."

"Oh, well," she said with a smile. "If it's that obvious…"

"You're not really the queen…" Loki said. "So where would the queen be? Not here, obviously, or else you wouldn't be. But you know you won't always be here. That means she's still alive. That means she's coming back."

The Lady's smile faded, and she looked down as she waited for him to say the inevitable.

"Gilliam," Loki said. "Gilliam's the queen. Gilliam is Lady Gallivant."

The Lady nodded, slowly at first, and then more firmly. "She was a very irresponsible queen," she said softly. "Risking the lives of everyone here, risking the very existence of Sindar. I wasn't the one to banish her; I was just the one they asked to take her place."

Loki nodded in acknowledgement. "Well," he said at last. "I'm sure my perfect brother is eager to prove his worth, so if you'll excuse me, Your Majesty." He made a small bow and walked out of the room, without either one saying another word.


	10. Chapter 10- No More Lies

Loki was bracing himself for the questions that Thor would likely bombard him with, but to his great relief, the guard that escorted him back was ready to take Thor to Lady Gallivant right away. Before he left, Thor expressed sympathy that Loki hadn't returned with the sword, but he seemed so pleased when he walked off that Loki was quite sure the only thing Thor was feeling was exhilaration that he'd get to hold something over his brother. Loki wondered how it would go for him. He honestly had no idea. Thor's life hadn't had nearly as many terrible moments as Loki's, but maybe he wasn't as strong as he made out. And that's when Loki realized that Thor wouldn't remember any terrible moments, and even if shown them, it wouldn't be his pain. It was rigged in his favor. He sighed and fell backwards on the bed.

He was surprised when he was sent for again, not that much later. He was taken to the throne room once more, and the first thing he saw was a big smile on Thor's face as he held the sword.

"Well," Loki said. "That didn't take nearly as long as it did for me."

"No, I think I was gone the same amount of time," Thor answered. "Half an hour, about, for both of us. And look!" he waved the sword. "I got it!"

"Shocker."

"I wanted to give it to you, Loki," the Lady said. "In fact I almost did."

"That's all right, Your Highness," he said. "This is nothing new for me."

She gave him a sympathetic smile. "I hope we meet again," she said. "Truly. But now you'd best go; it will take some time for you to get back to your portal, and the planet is dying."

But Loki didn't move. "No," he said. "I'm not going anywhere until you bring her back."

"Bring who back?" Thor asked, before remembering the last conversation he'd had with Loki. "What, Gilliam?"

"She's the queen," Loki informed him.

Thor looked appreciatively astonished, and Loki would have liked to revel in that, but instead he was staring at the Lady. "Well?"

The Lady looked at them and did not say a word.

"I know you can do it," Loki said. "You have the power for it; I've seen it. And you are, technically, still the ruler. So just bring her back already, and we'll be on our way."

The Lady still looked at them for a long time before saying anything. Loki was just about to point out that the planet was probably literally crumbling under Gilliam's feet right now when the queen nodded and said, "Very well, I suppose the time has indeed come." She raised her hand and slowly made an outline of a circle. It didn't appear to do anything at first, but then a portal appeared, and Gilliam stepped through. But a very different Gilliam it was now. She was dressed all in red and silver, and her greying hair was now neatly dressed. She no longer looked like the plain and ordinary woman the Asgardians had bumped into in the marketplace, but instead shone with a radiance that spoke of royalty even if nothing else had. Cari was in her arms of course, and the baby gave a cry of delight and pointed at Loki. The last thing Loki wanted to do when he saw that was smile, but it happened anyway, and though he wasn't looking at Thor, he could feel that one eye burning in him with the strength of a thousand. He was definitely going to hear about this later. So it didn't really matter that he reached out and took Cari's hand for a moment, because he knew his dignity was already shattered.

"Hello again," Gilliam said with a demure smile. "I always thought the universe was bigger than this. I see that I was wrong."

"Well well," Thor said, grinning proudly. "A queen is it? I always knew you'd rise high in the world, Gilliam."

She laughed, and then took on a more serious look. "Much as I'd love to have you stay here, I should inform you that the planet really has hours left, at best. You have to go now if you want to save your people. You two could stay here and be safe, of course, but you know your ship will not leave without you."

"Of course," Thor said. "Well farewell, again, to all of you."

Loki nodded at Gilliam, then looked up at the Lady once more. She looked at him in return, and only said, "I'm sure I'll see you in another life, Loki," before he turned and followed his brother out of the silver palace.

Loki walked as briskly as he could, but he knew Thor would still use this time to pack in as much conversation of recent events as he could. He wasn't wrong.

"So, we've got three out of the four things now," Thor started. He gave Loki a sideways glance. "What's the fourth thing? You do know what it is, right?"

" _I_ know what my greatest possession is, yes," Loki said. "But the goblin cannot possibly be referring to that, because he couldn't possibly know I have it. So that leaves…I don't know…my helmet maybe?"

"And you're willing to give it up?" Thor asked. "Whatever it is?"

"Please, Brother, you should at least have enough memories of me by now to know that I can get myself out of any situation I don't want to be in. If he wants what I fear he wants, I'll be able to find a way to avoid giving it to him."

"Now I see why the goblin is considered a reflection of you," Thor observed.

Loki shot him a quick look. "You don't really think he is, do you?" he asked in a voice that sounded more anxious than he meant it to. "Would you really compare me to him?"

"Of course not!" Thor reassured him. "He's much better looking."

Loki nodded. "Hilarious."

"No, but seriously," Thor said. "I don't see the goblin going out and risking his neck for someone other than himself."

Loki again found himself glancing at Thor and giving a smile he had not summoned.

Thor looked at the path ahead of him, and sighed impatiently. "Why couldn't the queen have just made us a portal back to that planet, like she did for Gilliam?"

"I'm sure she could have," Loki said. "But I wasn't about to ask her to do it."

"I'm starting to grow anxious about the others," Thor said. "What if there is really nothing there to get back to?"

"The queen wasn't even ready to pull Gilliam out yet," Loki said. "There's still time."

Neither said anything for the following several minutes, but this time it was Loki who broke the silence. "What was your test?" he asked.

"She showed me moments of hardship from my past," Thor answered. "At least I think it was my past. I was certainly there. Not really sure what the test part was, though. She never said; just when it was over she told me congratulations and gave me the Sword."

"Did she do anything else?"

"Well we had a conversation beforehand," Thor said. "Actually, at first I thought it was an interrogation, but it wasn't. And you?"

"The same," Loki said.

"But you didn't pass."

Loki hesitated. "No."

"So what happened? You got through it and she said you didn't make it?"

Part of Loki wanted to tell him that he'd practically begged her not to torture him anymore, and yet a good majority, the stronger majority, of him said to lie. So he did. "Yep," he answered. "I don't know what the test part was, either."

Thor's face fell a little bit, and that didn't go undetected by his companion. "What?" Loki asked. "Hoping for something more humiliating?"

"Hoping for the truth," Thor replied. "She told me, Brother. She told me exactly how and why you failed."

Loki's face didn't betray any reaction. "Oh."

"Why'd you stop?" Thor asked. "You stopped right after Odin's death, and as I'm told, that happened quite recently. You were right at the end. What could have possibly happened after that that you were afraid of seeing?"

"Our home planet was destroyed after that," Loki answered. "That's something I didn't need to see again."

"Please, Loki," Thor said. "No more lies."

"I don't know why you're asking me, since you clearly know," Loki said impatiently. "She probably told you that too, did she?"

"Of course not, what would she have said?"

"Oh, I don't know." Loki had already lost control of himself more times than once that day, and every time it was harder to get a grip. "That I can't bear the thought of you not recognizing me? That you've always been out there, somewhere, even when we were enemies, and that you looking at me, and through me, as if I were nobody to you feels like a dagger through my soul? We're on good terms at the moment, Thor, though I know I'm going to try and kill you again someday. But when I do I want you to know exactly whose doing it. And I don't want you to die not having a clue as to who I am, not remembering when I turned into a snake to kill you, or all the times we made fun of each other's helmets! And I can't…I can't…" He had to stop, because if nothing else, he wasn't going to weep in front of his brother. Not this time. "You're all I've got left," he finished, when he'd regained enough composure. "You're _all_ I've got left."

Thor listened calmly, and then nodded understandingly when it was over. "That was beautiful," he said, with just a hint of teasing.

"Shut up," Loki said brokenly.

"No, it was," Thor said. "I never thought of you as someone so emotional. We should be honest with each other more often."

"Yeah," Loki said, rubbing his face with both hands. "The day that happens is the day I stop being a trickster."

"I'm sorry," Thor said. "For looking at you like a stranger."

"It's not your fault," Loki said. "For once." He considered for a moment, and then added, "Of course, I wasn't there—you probably _did_ get yourself into that, somehow." He took a breath and managed to calm himself down the rest of the way, but he was determined not to open his mouth for a while now, just in case. Thor seemed to understand this, and didn't speak for a time, either.

When they arrived at the door, Thor was again the first one through. When Loki was back in the mirror of Asgard, he saw at once that the planet was certainly dying. The sky was curling up like a piece of paper thrown onto a fire, and gold flakes were raining down liberally now. They'd ended up near the burnt up house of Gilliam again, so there was a bit of a walk back to the goblin. But although things were looking pretty urgent now, Loki remembered something, and stopped, holding out his hand. "Give me the sword, I'll put the things in the bag now."

"Are you always this demanding?" Thor joked. "'Give me the horn, give me the bracelet, give me the sword.'"

Loki frowned slightly. He hadn't realized until then that Thor had actually been the one to obtain all three of the things they needed. Would it really be so terrible for him to contribute one thing? Assuming it wasn't what he suspected it to be, of course.

He slipped the key to the Sindar portal into the satchel first, and Thor asked, "Why now? We're on our way back, we may as well just wait to give them to him."

"I don't want him to think I'm holding out on him," Loki said. "Creatures like him are always looking for the loopholes so they can break a deal."

"That's true," Thor said, and then grinned. "It would be like the time I had you obtain a gift for Mother, but I waited so long to get it from you that you claimed it was then rightfully yours!"

Loki froze as he let the Horn drop into the satchel. He waited for an agonizing moment before looking up at Thor. "What?" he asked in the most chilling tone he could conjure.

Thor looked up with inquisitively raised eyebrows. "Hm?" he asked, and then suddenly the realization of what he said hit him and his eye tripled in size. "Oh…"

"Please don't tell me you heard that from Heimdall," Loki said, still chillingly. "Because I _might_ not believe you."


	11. Chapter 11- The Loophole

**A/N: I know I said I wouldn't do another author's note until the end, but I wanted to apologize for not providing an update as quickly as I have been. Sometimes I wonder if it's better to provide rapid fire updates so readers don't lose interest, and sometimes I wonder if it's better to sort of string them along and arise anticipation in them...**

 **But I digress. No, the reason I didn't update was because I saw the INFINITY WAR trailer, and it sort of floored me for a while. And then I started planning another story I'm going to write based on THAT, but more on that another time.**

 **joycylen. : LOL, I hope I didn't ruin the story for you with the previous chapter! But from the beginning, that's what I intended to happen. I hope you'll be satisfied with the explanation I give in this and the following two chapters. So here it is!**

Loki pulled out one of his knives. "I swear Thor, you'd better start talking right now."

Thor seemed unsure of what to do, so he awkwardly raised his hands. "Hey, look at that, my memories came back! It was so sudden I didn't even notice."

"No," Loki said. "Try again. I know when I'm being lied to."

"Well apparently you don't!" Thor pointed out.

Loki strode forward, aiming the knife at him. "You know how just now I said there'd come a time I'd try to kill you again?"

Thor backed up. "Okay, okay, but I swear Loki, this just happened. I mean, just happened…a few hours ago."

"When exactly?" Loki asked through clenched teeth.

Thor looked up as the gold sky began turning to black. Around them, several trees were starting to do the same, and shrieks could be heard from the marketplace as the people began panicking. He fidgeted uncomfortably. "Do you think now is really an appropriate time to have this conversation?"

" _Yes._ "

"I really think we should go, Loki," Thor said urgently. "We're running out of time."

Loki grabbed Thor and shoved him up against one of the trees that wasn't dying. He held the dagger up close to his throat. "We no longer have to go see the goblin," he reminded him. "We've got all the time in the world. But if you're concerned, you'd better talk quickly."

Thor's eye narrowed dangerously. "If you were afraid of me with my hammer, Brother," he said. "You should know that I am even more powerful without it."

"If all I can do is take out your other eye, do not think for a second that I won't."

Thor seemed to struggle inwardly, wondering what to do, before he made a decision. "It happened when we walked through the door to Sindar."

If Loki's eyes had the power to kill, they would have definitely done it by now.

"I was going to tell you," Thor protested. "I mean at first I didn't know where I was or what had happened, and then when you walked through the door I was ready to demand the answers to both those questions. And then when you said we were on a new planet things started clicking for me, and…"

"And?" Loki pressed impatiently, when Thor didn't continue. He was still holding the knife with dangerous poise, and Thor eyed it nervously.

"Um," he said, but when Loki pushed the knife against him he quickly said, "And I knew you'd want to turn back right away if you knew our journey was over, but I wasn't ready for it to be."

Loki blinked, trying to comprehend. "Why not?" Thor looked at him guiltily, waiting for him to figure it out, which of course Loki did after considering. "Hold on, you—you lied to me because you wanted to spend _time_ with me?"

Thor scratched the back of his head. "Well it sounds stupid _now_."

"It's a lot more than stupid, Thor!" Loki cried, waving his knife about along with his arms. "Did you even consider your actions for one instant, or did you decide right away that you'd stick to your story? We had absolutely no idea what we were walking into on Sindar, and you let us walk into it needlessly. And what about all the people we left behind? Gilliam was right when she said they wouldn't leave without you, even if the planet vanished from under them. After all we went through to rescue them, you would just let them die because you were enjoying yourself?"

"We were going to go anyway," Thor answered. "You were aware of the danger, and you were taking that into consideration! I knew it'd end with the goblin anyway, so I thought, what's the harm in letting it run its course? We'll succeed, we'll fly off the planet, and Loki will never be the wiser. I'm not even sure Heimdall would have known if I didn't say anything." He sighed and beat his palm against his forehead. "I was doing so well, how could I have been so _stupid_ to let that story about Mother slip?"

"You?" Loki demanded. "How could _I_ have not spotted that lie a million miles away?"

"I don't know," Thor admitted. "I actually thought you'd catch me in it right away, but I guess you were so preoccupied with Gilliam that you didn't notice the transition. After that it was easy to keep up the pretense."

Loki pursed his lips as he considered what to do next. Thor glanced down at the knife again. "Feel like putting that away?" he asked carefully.

Loki looked down at it like he'd forgotten it was there, and after giving Thor a look, he complied. "I can't believe you were going on just now about how we ought to be more honest with each other," he said crisply.

"Oh, after all the times you've lied to me, I don't get a pass?" Thor returned.

Loki looked up at him and glared. "You still haven't said why you did it," he said.

"Of course I did," Thor said. "I was having fun. I never would have thought something so trivial would be so enjoyable, least of all with _you_. But I figured you wouldn't betray me if I didn't even know who you were, because where would be the fun in that for you? And that was kind of a nice feeling, one I'm not used to."

"Thor, we literally just did something like that. Or were you not there for Ragnarok?"

"As I recall, you were trying to betray me before that."

Loki rolled his eyes. "Come on, I showed up when it mattered."

"Well, that was because you'd heard there'd be glory involved," Thor teased. He looked up as the trees surrounding them began to turn gold and flake up, causing the ground to shake and other trees to fall. "We need to go now, Loki. Please."

Loki hesitated, then aimed a warning finger at his brother. "Don't consider this conversation to be over."

"No, yeah, that's…pretty evident," Thor said. He took off running, and Loki followed. They made sure to give the goblin's part of the forest a wide berth, but truthfully, they could only hope they were doing so successfully. The destruction that had already happened to it, as well as the destruction that was continuing to happen, was making it rather difficult to know exactly where it was they were going. They knew vaguely the direction that the ship was in, but it was one thing to know where it was, and another to be able to actually travel in that direction, what with all the confusion going on.

Loki assumed that neither was going to voice the concern that they might not be able to find their way back, and yet somehow he wasn't at all surprised when Thor cried, "Do you know where you're going?"

"Last I checked, you were the one in front!" Loki yelled back. "But yes, this is the way, just keep going!"

Thor's almost immediate response was to abruptly come to a halt. "Okay…we're going to just sort of veer to the left a bit," he said, grabbing Loki's arm and pulling him along.

Loki didn't have time to ask why that was, but he immediately saw the reason. The goblin was running full tilt towards them. Thor led them in a wide circle that deterred from their path, but supposedly put them back on course by the time he'd completed it. Loki wasn't sure anymore, all he had was his vague sense of direction which had never let him down before, and his sudden bout of trust in his brother. The goblin was still following them, but his spindly little legs were really not at all sufficient to keep up with them.

"You cheaters!" He screeched in a high-pitched voice. "We had a deal!"

"Sorry!" Thor called, turning his head around. "We found a loophole!" When he faced front again, he gave a cry of triumph. "I see the top of it, over there! I told you I knew where I was going!"

"Thor," Loki said warningly, still looking behind them. "Thor!" He began rapping his brother's shoulder anxiously. "You might want to start bringing out that oh-so-helpful lightning."

Thor looked back and almost tripped in surprise. The goblin's legs were spindly no longer. The goblin was growing, growing fast, and growing very big indeed.


	12. Chapter 12- Last Minute Crisis

Thor came to a sudden halt, resulting in Loki colliding into his back. "Did you know he could do that?" Thor gasped.

"Did I know that a goblin I've never met before who lives on a planet that doesn't exist could suddenly grow ten feet taller? No, Thor, can't say I did," Loki snapped. "And you weren't supposed to stop, you're supposed to hit it with a lightning blast!"

"It doesn't work like that," Thor said. "It's like weeping or falling asleep, you can't just do it on command!"

"Oh for crying out loud," Loki muttered before bringing his fist up under Thor's chin.

"HEY!" Thor cried, "Loki, what-?"

"I stole the Tesseract," Loki blurted out.

"You _what_?" Thor's fingertips started forming sparks, and Loki glanced down at them before grabbing his brother's shoulders and whipping him around to face the goblin. Loki had aroused quite a bit of anger in Thor, but Thor at least had a good enough grip to know he needed to channel it towards the goblin, and deal with Loki later. So he did. His eyes started glowing, storm clouds began forming in what little of the sky there was left, and sparks began running up and down his arms, until they culminated in his hands, and a large burst of lightning flew from him towards the goblin. They both watched as the goblin gave a horrible scream and fell backwards.

"Great, wonderful, now run," Loki said.

"Is he dead?" Thor asked, looking back even as he ran.

"Probably not, but he's stalled, and that's all we need."

They could hear the crashing of trees moments later behind them, so they knew that he'd gotten up and was following them again. When they came in sight of the ship, Brunnhilde again ran down the ramp and frowned. "What _is_ that?" she asked, looking past them.

"The thing that stole my memories," Thor said.

She pulled out her sword as the goblin crawled into sight, very charred and with smoke rising off of him. "Well, what's a crash-landing without having a last minute crisis?"

"No way, we don't have time," Thor said urgently, grabbing her arm.

"I'm sorry to disagree, Your Majesty, but if we don't take care of this problem now then he's going to attack the ship on the way out. We just fixed it, we can't spend any more time on it!"'

"Look around you!" Loki said. "There's not going to be a way out if we don't leave right now!"

Brunnhilde glanced up at the sky, and set her teeth. "Yes there will," she said determinedly, and ran towards it with a war cry, brandishing her sword. The goblin went right for her, and Loki and Thor were distracted by her for a moment slaying the creature with such expertise. Loki snapped out of it first, and began pushing Thor onto the ship. "Go, go!"

"If someone doesn't drag her onto the ship then she won't come until it's dead!" Thor protested. "I'm not leaving without her."

"She'll be fine, I'll go get her!" Loki answered. "But you need to go and get this thing fired up."

Thor reluctantly looked back at her, and then hurried up the ramp onto the ship. Loki walked with him part of the way, but then turned when Thor was gone and ran back down. He stepped onto the ground with the intention of going after the Valkyrie, but the ground started giving way under his foot. He quickly retreated and glanced down to see that it was turning black and crumbling away. There was now very little of the planet to be seen. What was left seemed to be only partially there, and even that was rapidly disappearing, so that one could see the stars of space behind it in big bare patches.

"Val!" Loki called. "It's now or never!"

Brunnhilde gave the creature one more stab to ensure its death, then turned towards the ship. But suddenly there came a great noise that was even louder than all the destruction going around them. Brunnhilde and Loki looked up, and through the patches of sky they could vaguely make out the outline of a ship. In one swift motion that didn't even seem to take a second to happen, a huge, mechanical arm descended from the ship and lifted Brunnhilde up and away. Loki could hear the echo of a scream as she disappeared from sight, and then the ship disappeared as well. Loki looked up in stunned silence for a moment, but when the ship roared to life, he turned and ran towards the main deck.

"Where is she?" Thor asked.

"Get us out of here," Loki commanded.

"Where is she, Loki?"

"She's gone, all right?" Loki snapped. Thor stared at him in an even more stunned silence than Loki just had, so Loki strode towards the controls and lifted the ship off the ground.

"You said you'd get her," Thor said dully, as though the words weren't his.

"Yeah, well, I lied," Loki said, as he carefully flew the ship through one of the last diminishing spots of sky. "You know what that's like."

Thor came back to life and tried to grab the controls that Loki was currently handling. "No, I'm not going to just leave her there!"

"I didn't say she was _dead_ ," Loki explained impatiently. "I said she was gone, as in, another ship came in and captured her."

Thor's stunned look turned into one of incredulity. "Loki you've told one or two tall tales in your time, but that one isn't even believable. There's no way another ship came in and left so quickly."

"Believe what you want, Brother, but that's what happened." Once they had left the planet's atmosphere and were flying safely amongst the stars again, Loki let go of the controls, and Thor reached over and took them into his own hands.

"Find Heimdall for me, will you?" Thor asked in a much calmer voice.

Loki's first instinct was to refuse, to say that _he_ wasn't the messenger; that was _her_ job. But something in Thor's steely glance made him think better of it. He turned without a word, but met Heimdall coming up to see them. Right. He had already seen what it was Thor wanted.

"How are you, my king?" Heimdall asked.

Thor turned in his seat and looked at him. "Memories are completely back, thank you, if that's what you mean."

"Why have you sent for me?"

"Because," Thor said firmly. "I want to know if you can see her."

"I can see her, yes," Heimdall answered. "She is alive, though bound and gagged. But I cannot see where she is. Something is blocking my sight." He looked at Loki.

"Are you even aware that your first impulse whenever something goes wrong is to look at me?" Loki inquired.

"I am usually just in doing so," Heimdall answered.

"Well this time you're not," Loki said. "I don't know where she is, and I had nothing to do with her getting there. She was taken by a ship, that's all I know."

Thor nodded. "Then we'll find her," he said. "Forget Midgard. Ships have to land sometime, and we'll search every planet until we find where they've taken her."

Heimdall bowed his head. "I shall inform the people, Your Majesty."

"Thank you," Thor said, and when he had left, he turned to Loki, who had a doubtful look on his face. "What?"

"The people," Loki said. "Here you are again, not thinking of them. You're really going to cart several thousand civilians across the entire galaxy?"

"Did you really steal the Tesseract?" Thor asked in response.

Loki turned and looked out the front window for a long moment. "No," he said at last. "I only said that to bring out the lightning."

Thor nodded. "Good," he said. "That's what I thought, because I know you're smarter than that, and you wouldn't try to use it _again_. And as for the people, they are homeless anyway. We may as well spend our days on this ship as anywhere else. Are you with me?"

Loki turned back to him. "Why did you lie?" he demanded in a calm voice.

Thor looked at him blankly. " _I_ lied?" Then his eyes took on an understanding look. "Oh, right. I really am very sorry about that, you know. I just didn't see the harm in keeping quiet about something that you'd accepted wasn't possible."

Loki nodded. "So if it turned out Mother was alive," he said. "Would I have the right not to tell you, simply because you've accepted her death?"

"Well I never would have thought you'd be one for lecturing," Thor said. "But that's different and you know it."

"Not to me it isn't," Loki said. "I already told you that you without your memories was killing me. And even with that knowledge, you still weren't going to tell me."

"Well, I wasn't even sure it would last," Thor said. "Seeing as how I'm not even sure how it happened."

Loki suddenly remembered something. "That's why Lady Gallivant said the goblin wouldn't have sent us there if he'd known the power of Sindar," he said. "Because there was a way to reverse it without him. That means she knew then, of course."

Thor nodded. "I didn't even have to tell her. And she tried to get me to tell you."

"But you _didn't._ "

Thor looked guiltily at him. "What more do you want me to say?" He asked. "Anyway, you never would have said…what you did if you'd known that I was aware."

"And if for no other reason, that's why you shouldn't have lied to me."

"I thought you liked it when I lied to you," Thor protested. "Last time you used the word 'impressed,' as I recall."

"Yes, well that was then. There was nothing impressive about what you did. I just should have been able to see right through you, but I wasn't. Which is why I hate sentiment."

"Loki, you lie to me and everybody else all the time. You're probably lying to me right now about something, and I'm going to feel foolish later when I find out what it is. Now you know what it feels like. So just take that and move on."

Loki narrowed his eyes. "Very well," he said. "But I'm never going to be off my guard again, so if I catch you doing it again I really will take your other eye out." He turned on his heel and was halfway out of the room when Thor stopped him.

"I don't know why you did it," he said. "Why you came with me on that quest. In spite of what you said, I not sure if you're _that_ selfless. But whatever your reason, thank you for trying."

Loki bit his lip and nodded.

"But I do need to know whether you are going to help me find Valkyrie," Thor pressed.

Loki thought for a minute, nodded again. "Yes," he said. "I will. For as long as it takes."


	13. Chapter 13- Epilogue

They searched for her for two years. They flew from one planet to the next, and most of the people on board were startled to learn that there were so many more planets than the ones they knew of. Of course it was common knowledge that there were a lot of them, but seeing them up close and personal, with all their varying cultures and peoples and colors, was something a good majority of them had never experienced. Even travelling by Bifrost among their familiar nine realms was a novelty that one never really got to do unless specially invited.

But Thor seemed determined to check every single planet out there. If it was convenient, he even went back and checked a planet twice, because there was always the fear that either they could have missed her the first time, or that she'd landed there after them. It really was a very insufficient search system that he had going on, but he didn't know what else to do. There was no way of tracking her, there was no real description of the ship that had taken her, and though Heimdall said she was alive, he still could never see where exactly she was.

Loki was just as unpredictable as ever, because he became the most gracious of passengers. He did whatever Thor or Heimdall asked of him with nary an eye roll, or a magic trick, or any kind of delay. In fact it reminded Thor of the time before his first coronation, where although he'd been mischievous and untrustworthy, you could always count on him to come through when it mattered. But though the people on the ship grew used to the idea that he was now on their side and would help wherever he could, there still was a kind of unspoken caution in regards to him. He didn't seem to be doing anything behind their backs, but that didn't mean he didn't have a plan to kill them all or sell them out or anything like that. As for what Loki was thinking in regards to all this, that to remained a mystery, as he never said. He and Thor seemed to have completely made peace, and were not at each other's throats, but that too was subject to change at any moment.

But even he was not paramount in the concerns of the people. They began talking amongst themselves, and occasionally to Heimdall, since he probably had heard them anyway. And so one day, after two years had passed since the Mirror of Asgard, Heimdall approached Thor, who was studying notes and lists of planets that he'd heard of and hadn't visited yet.

"My lord," Heimdall said. "How long do intend to search for the Valkyrie?"

Thor looked at him suspiciously, and then glanced over at Loki, who returned his gaze and shrugged. "As long as it takes," Thor said. "That's what we agreed."

"No," Heimdall said. "That's what _you_ agreed. Lest you forget, this ship was only meant to be an escape route, a method of transport to somewhere that we could call home. If we had been traveling for two years in search of that home, then I think the people would not now be murmuring against you. But you have not given any thought to that, and so they have concerns."

"They're murmuring against me?" Thor asked angrily. "They know perfectly well what we are doing. We're going after one of our own, who was taken in the most cowardly fashion. Asgard shall not stand for this."

"But you and I both know that you would not have pursued just anyone this fiercely," Heimdall said. "It's only because she's a friend of yours. No one else even knows her."

"Loki knows her," Thor pointed out. "Hulk does too, and anyone who still has doubts may take them up with him."

"Thor," Loki said. " _Heimdall_ has doubts. He's saying we should give up the search."

Thor looked from Heimdall to Loki and back to Heimdall. "Is that what you're saying?"

"I think we have given more than a reasonable amount of time to looking for her," Heimdall said firmly. "Finding a lost subject of yours is, of course, the noble and kingly thing to do. But to drag everyone else into that search, a search that is now consuming your life? That is no longer noble nor kingly."

"But you say she's still alive," Thor said through gritted teeth. "Why can't you see where she is?"

"She's taken care of herself all these years," Heimdall said. "She can do it again. One day she may find her way back to us, and then you will welcome her with open arms and tell her you spent years searching for her. But for now it's time to think of all of your other subjects. This ship is no home to them. It isn't even built to carry as many as it's carrying."

Thor looked at Loki. "What do you think?"

"I think this is your decision," Loki replied. "I will go with whatever you decide."

"I think I liked you better when you were a control freak," Thor muttered, though of course all three of them knew he didn't mean it.

Thor thought for a while, then gave a long sigh. "Very well," he said. "We shall go to Midgard like we originally planned. I know a place there for us to settle."

Heimdall nodded. "Very good, Your Majesty." He bowed himself out, and Loki slowly rose out of his chair and joined Thor, who was staring out of the window reflectively.

"I don't like this Loki," Thor said.

Loki nodded. "I know."

Thor didn't say anything else, so Loki gave him a sideways look and asked, "What place did you have in mind?"

"Norway," Thor answered. "Where we last saw our father."

Loki hesitated. "Do you really think it's a good idea to go back to earth?"

"Of course!" Thor said confidentally. "The people of earth love me, I'm very popular."

"Let me rephrase that," Loki said patiently. "Do you really think it's a good idea to bring _me_ back to earth?"

"Probably not, to be honest," Thor admitted. Loki nodded with a smirk. "But I wouldn't worry, Brother," Thor continued. "I have a feeling everything's gonna work out fine."

Loki nodded with a more genuine smile now, but both his and Thor's faded as something began to rise up in front of the window. They both looked at it in shock and wonder as it rose into view: a ship, a very massive ship, bigger than anything they could have thought was feasible to exist.

"What is that?" Thor demanded.

"I don't know," Loki said slowly. "It looks familiar, somehow, but I've never seen it before."

"She's on that ship," a voice said from behind them. They both whirled around to see Heimdall, who had appeared as silently as a ghost.

"What?" Thor asked.

"Brunnhilde," said Heimdall. "She's on the ship. I still can't see her, but…I know."

As if on cue, a small pod left the big ship and flew right to theirs. It latched on near the doors, and its own door began to open. Thor frantically ran to the control panel and opened the ship's door.

"Thor!" Loki said. "What are you doing? You don't know who that is!"

Thor didn't answer, but watched anxiously as a figure in a protective suit made its way through the door. Thor began rushing towards it, and Loki and Heimdall followed.

By the time they'd reached the figure, she'd taken her helmet off. For it was indeed the Valkyrie they'd spent so much time searching for.

Thor began to laugh joyously and triumphantly, gathering her up in his massive arms. But went she went almost limp in his arms, he let go and helped her down as she began to crumple. He got a good look at her face then, and saw that it was very thin, and incredibly bashed up.

"What happened to you?" Loki asked.

After taking several gulps of air, Brunnhilde looked up at him. "He wants it," she breathed. "He wants the Tesseract."

Loki felt his heart stop for a moment, but he didn't dare show that. He turned to Thor. "Maybe let's not ask her any questions," he said. "She's clearly been through an ordeal."

"He's not going to leave unless he gets it," Brunnhilde said warningly. "That's the only reason he let me come back to you. To tell you that he knows you have it, and he expects you to hand it over with no complications."

Thor stared at her, then up at Loki. "So you did steal it."

"No," Loki said without missing a beat. "No, I didn't, Brother, so are you going to listen to me, or to the one who stole Brunnhilde?"

"I'm going to listen to my own reason," Thor said.

"Well that's a relief," Loki said sarcastically.

Thor's face fell a little bit. "And there's the final proof," he said. "See, it's just too much of a coincidence that you would have lied to me about stealing it, and then someone pays us a visit and demands it of you, unless you weren't lying at all. And I'm seeing your old behavior come back, because you've been caught and you know it."

Loki turned to Heimdall. "Tell him I don't have it."

"I can't," he said. "Because I know this is what you've been hiding from me. You disguised it, I suspect, with the same magic that the girl's captor used to disguise her."

"Thanos," Brunnhilde said. "His name is Thanos."

Thor was still looking at Loki, and noticed that his already pale face turned just a shade whiter at the name of Thanos. "You know who that is," Thor pressed.

Loki looked unsure of what to say, and Thor stood up. "All right," he said. "Look, I know you have it, Loki, and nothing you say will convince me otherwise. But it doesn't matter, because there's no way I'm giving an Infinity Stone to someone that makes even you quake in your boots."

"What?" Brunnhilde asked. "No, you can't, you can't fight him! He's more powerful than you could ever imagine, and I've seen some pretty powerful beings in my day."

"And he'll become even more powerful if he gets the Tesseract," Heimdall said. "I agree with your decision, my king."

"Good," Thor said. "Does this thing have a microphone?" he walked over the control panel, and after gently touching some of the buttons, he found the one he was looking for and pressed it. He leaned down and said, in a booming voice that resonated across space, "We do not agree to your request, Thanos. But we are willing to come to some sort of arrangement to make up for this inconvenience."

"That was uncharacteristically diplomatic," Brunnhilde said.

"There are some things you can see pretty quickly in someone who wants to kill you," Thor said.

The other ship didn't do anything for a moment, and then suddenly about twenty-five big guns were pointed in their direction.

"Oh that's not good," Loki said.

"Get us out of here!" Brunnhilde yelled to Thor.

"There's no time!" Thor said with a petrified look on his face. "I didn't think things would escalate that quickly!"

And as every gun fired, the citizens of Asgard braced themselves for the worst.

 **The End**

 **A/N: I know, I know, that's like the most unsatisfying ending to a story ever. But that's always how I planned to end it, because now we start venturing on Infinity War's territory, and that's an entirely different story.**

 **Fortunately, I am writing that story! Yep, I'm basically writing how I think Infinity War could go, only I'm putting it on a different website, Archive of Our Own. So if you want to read it, you can just go on that site and search "The Infinity War Movie" by NelindeA. (Isn't that such a creative title?) I may eventually put it on this site, too, but I wouldn't hold my breath for that, since I'll only do it if I really, really like how it turns out.**

 **joycyelyn. : I know, it got way dark way quickly. But I feel like the continuation of this story is going to be the darkest story Marvel's ever done, so I had to include some of that at the end there. (And I almost killed Valkyrie off, so, be grateful I came to my senses before committing a murder I'd regret)**

 **RedQueenOfMine: Thank you! I'm happy to see such positive reactions to the fairy-tale feeling, because the story made the decision to go that way without asking my permission first.**

 **Guest: You know who you are, since you're the only "guest" who's reviewed so far. Thank you! Those four simple words make me happier than you could guess!**

 **Thanks everybody, again, for all the reviews, follows, and favorites. I'm still fairly new here, so this is the best any of my stories have done so far, and that's very exciting for me!**

 **I hope to see you on Archive of Our Own for my other story. But if not, I'll still be writing a bunch of other things on this website, so I'll see you then!**


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